Ling Chen in 'Spirited Away' Lensed by Juliette Cassidy for Porter Edit May 14, 2021
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Model Ling Chen is styled by Natasha Wray in ‘Spirited Away’, a spring 2021 fashion tribute to designers who specialize in what Porter Edit’s Sara McAlpine calls “wanderlust wardrobes”. Photographer Juliette Cassidy is behind the lens, capturing looks from Arch 4, Dodo Bar, Dries Van Noten, Eres, Fendi, Kenneth Ize, Loewe, Missoni and more designers for a fashion story that’s visually calmer and more restrained than the words convey.
COVID-19 has taught us how to use our imaginations. In the case of ‘Spirited Away’, Kenneth Ize, Loewe and Missoni capture the spirit of wanderlust best. Here’s what McAlpine’s designers had to say about the undercurrents running through the spring 2021 collections.
Fashion-adventure seekers are inspired by the “stimulating textures of technicolor raffia, clashing prints, and a sun-washed palette befitting a Moroccan souk.” pulsing through our style veins this spring.
Modernism helps define and update where 70’s bohemia lives in summer 2021 style. The NET-A-PORTER fashion story features Dries Van Noten’s “razor-sharp precision’ construction techniques with the “invigorating, optimistic prints of artist Len Lye.”
The designer describes his exclusive High Summer capsule, available only at NET-A-PORTER, as “a collection about dreaming, which is so important for a future – for new life”. Van Noten also told PORTER that the collection is about “going out to dance” and that “celebrating the clichéd symbols of summer is a story I want to tell right now”.
“I love the idea of looking down and lifting your head up to see a bunch of beautiful colors.” ~ Kenneth Ize Image: Juliette Cassidy for Porter Edit May 14, 2021
Lagos-based designer Kenneth Ize — on AOC’s short-list — also wants clothes that inspire us to think about “how to rejoice and be happy”.
“It’s a different idea of what I want the future to look like… Full of elegance, full of spirit, full of joy, energy and love.” That energy manifests itself in the form of Ize’s technicolor pants, hand-woven using an original take on the Yoruba Aso-Oke technique, mastered by his team of 30 local artisans in Nigeria (“I’ve never seen anything like it”). The designer’s signature rainbow stripes, paired with his block-colored, contemporary and cool narrow-waisted tailoring, similarly spark joy. “I love the idea of looking down and lifting your head up to see a bunch of beautiful colors.”
As always Loewe delivers a powerful style punch for summer, with this Loewe + Paula’s Ibiza fringed raffia basket bag. The bag extols the artisan heritage of Loewe’s since 1846. With our environmental consciousness running high, and raffia falls into the positive in sustainability attributes category we care about deeply. Raffia is associated with wanderlust and slow living, of unleashing creativity in ways of weaving to create useful objects that read uncommercial and low tech.
Libby Page, senior market editor at NET-A-PORTER sends us off with exhuberant words that describe a generally grounded and quite classical set of fashion images — with a few exceptions. In her heart, Page may agree with AOC more than her words suggest:
“This summer is about feeling GOOD and trying things that feel DIFFERENT, eclectic and EXCITING.”
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Note that the Loewe Paula’s Ibiza SS2021 Campaign captures Page’s words with total rapture. The Porter Edit reader is still considering the wisdom of really taking off our face masks — and that’s okay, too.
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Porter Edit’s ‘Spirited Away’ fashion story continues. See all the product credits at Net-A-PORTER.
