Matthew Linde on the Best Fashion of 2024

SOPHIE GONTARD, “I FIND MEN’S CLOTHING FUNNY” (INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE LA MODE, PARIS, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

Can you feel Anne Hollander’s grief? Four hundred years of modernist development culminating in what is, for Hollander, the perfect sartorial rationalization of men’s bodies—the suit—here abandoned and lampooned by this IFM upstart. The collection is like the ridicule of a child: frustratingly precise in its imitation of mundane adult rituals. Men are ludicrous creatures and our dress codes do little to detract from this. Lapels? Cable-knit sweaters? Double-breasted trenches? We are cartoons hiding in plain sight.
OLIVIA STEWART, “IT’S JUST CLOTHES” (UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER, LONDON, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

Any designer who appropriates Michael Kors (Telfar Clemens, for instance) has my vote. Stewart pilfers Kors’s Voyager tote, remaking the ubiquitous handbag in a tan that approximates the designer’s own Trumpian skin tone. Even better, though, is her inspired trespassing of the Primark sequin dress and disco pants. Here, enlarged sequins completely adorn a miniskirt and a floor-length boob tube dress, both with long rectangular trains. She completes her blitzkrieg upon fashion’s chintzy marketplace with an utterly raffish Ugg-shrug jacket.
ELLEN POPPY HILL, “CONSTANT STATE OF REPAIR” (SPRING/SUMMER 2025)

For her first collection since graduating Central Saint Martins, Poppy Hill patches together garments (like a bias-cut dress) with yellowed-cream fabric strips that look like masking tape, as if to sanctify the pell-mell of mending. Comically large 3D zippers adorn jackets made from wool blankets with satin trim. Comic book tears in skirts reveal red lining. This past fall, her studio installation at London’s Dover Street Market—full of threads, pins, doodads, tape, and dust bunnies—coronated the designer’s material refuse. It gave us thetype of indocile tchotchkes The Shop (Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas’s 1993 retail project) should have stocked.
YANNIS FRANCILLON, “LA DÉGAINE” (THE QUICKDRAW) (INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE LA MODE, PARIS, MFA THESIS COLLECTION)

Just when you think Denma has sapped the last poetic drops from “everyday clothing” into a pricey deadspace of desiccated hypebeast merch, Francillon’s collection restores the precious poiesis of the everyday. An upturned collar, a misplaced pocket, a sun-faded (or is it actually laser-printed?) purple T-shirt jersey, a gray-felt moving blanket transfigured as a trench: This is fashion’s animation of matter at work. No wonder Francillon now resides at Bottega (and not Balenciaga).
STELLA MINKYUNG CHO, “LONG SKIRT, SHORT HAIR” (INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE LA MODE, PARIS, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

Transparent paillettes printed in plaid speckle a sleeveless top while hair rollers uphold the strips of a skirt. Cho delivers explosive bobs, glittery dresses, a velvet sequin peacoat, and laser-cut polka-dot shorts. Redditors labeled it mutant balletcore.
XUEHU ZHANG, “ANEMOIA” (ROYAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS ANTWERP, MA THESIS COLLECTION)

In the Gameosphere, old-school polygonal computer graphics are trending again. Likewise in fashion, “low-poly” Minecraft and Roblox looks are making the circuits. Zhang updates both by 3D-rendering entirely new sartorial shapes for his human avatars. If JW Anderson’s pixelated jumper (from his SS23 capsule collection) feels all too obvious, Zhang’s project is a refreshing expansion pack to Thierry Mugler’s FW90 “Anatomique Computer” garments. A lesson in how to wear Euclidean space.
PATRICK TAYLOR “NO EASY WAY DOWN” (PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN, NEW YORK, MFA THESIS COLLECTION)

Unwieldy knit wear is literally huge this year. Imagine full-grown adults playing children’s sports in fantasy ski resorts.
SOFIA RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ, “BROKEN TOOTH” (ROYAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS ANTWERP, MFA THESIS COLLECTION)

Tulle profiterole puffs detonate from trenches, leather jackets, and suits. Tumid girlishness. Simone Rocha on citric acid.
THOMAS SPOONER, “CUTLERY” (CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS, LONDON, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

Issey Miyake understood knit as the great equalizer, A Piece of Cloth that could be a universal fit, any size, stretching for all! Spooner’s collection obliterates such hope with knitted jacquardsbonded to silhouettes of stiff cardboard packaging. “Elegance is refusal,” said Coco Chanel.
MATTY BOVAN (AUTUMN/WINTER 2024–25)

Central Saint Martins, circa early twenty-first century: A carnival of artisan kids making manteaus from plastic clutter and crap—yardage of fresh textile coiled into entire collections; silhouettes like a crude children’s sketch. We admire the toddler’s collage of glued wooden sticks and crayon handprints as memorabilia of a now forlorn wonder. The school is a Dickensian Fashion mill; their ringleader is Charles Fredrick Worth high on mercury. This is Bovan’s fête galante, his inherited livery, of Louise Wilson and Louise Gray.

FASHION

SOPHIE GONTARD, “I FIND MEN’S CLOTHING FUNNY” (INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE LA MODE, PARIS, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

OLIVIA STEWART, “IT’S JUST CLOTHES” (UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER, LONDON, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

ELLEN POPPY HILL, “CONSTANT STATE OF REPAIR” (SPRING/SUMMER 2025)

YANNIS FRANCILLON, “LA DÉGAINE” (THE QUICKDRAW) (INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE LA MODE, PARIS, MFA THESIS COLLECTION)

STELLA MINKYUNG CHO, “LONG SKIRT, SHORT HAIR” (INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE LA MODE, PARIS, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

XUEHU ZHANG, “ANEMOIA” (ROYAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS ANTWERP, MA THESIS COLLECTION)

PATRICK TAYLOR “NO EASY WAY DOWN” (PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN, NEW YORK, MFA THESIS COLLECTION)

SOFIA RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ, “BROKEN TOOTH” (ROYAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS ANTWERP, MFA THESIS COLLECTION)

THOMAS SPOONER, “CUTLERY” (CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS, LONDON, BA THESIS COLLECTION)

MATTY BOVAN (AUTUMN/WINTER 2024–25)

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