SHOWnews: Claudia Schiffer Flows, Nick Knight On Yohji Yamamoto And More
Thoughts On Nick Knight's First Fashion Film
When you strip away Yasmeen Ghauri and Jenny Howorth; all those watercolour ikats and flat shoes; what remains from Yohji Yamamoto S/S 90 are mood sensations of the 90s at early dawn. Day-glo pastels (1992). Braids as an ethnic style semiotic (1994). The symbolic colour black (fashion people, 1990 to 1999). You could argue Yohji Yamamoto designed a decade in this collection. You might be correct. Perhaps lopping all that fashion symbolism off is what makes Nick Knight’s seminal fashion film, about that collection, meaningful. Despite every ‘first’ contained within the kinetic triangle of Knight, Yamamoto and Marc Ascoli, Knight’s rustic re-rendering of something hewn from fashion placed in the wild, broadens limited visions around clothes. For in 1990, Knight extracted the ethereal in-between from Yohji and Yamamoto. Watch now to learn how from masterful masters.
Claudia Schiffer Returns To Chloé This Summer
Chloé creative director Chemena Kamali debuts a summer collection titled Chloé à la Plage. It visualises how to pull fast fashion attention spans by inviting a longtime friend of Chloé for a visit: the superlative model Claudia Schiffer. Cinematic sensuality traded between Schiffer and a David Sims-directed lens captures an effervescence radiating underneath their profile on summertime relaxation. These techniques come easy to a seasoned professional like Claudia Schiffer.
‘Claudia Schiffer has always embodied the kind of cross-generational femininity that defines Chloé. When I met Claudia for the first time, I was struck by her natural beauty and authenticity. Her thoughtfulness, confidence and free spirit are truly inspirational. For me, summer is a feeling and a memory of escape, freedom, and lightness – and Claudia naturally brings to life this emotional connection to summer full of radiance and intimacy.’
— Chemena Kamali, Creative Director of Chloé
Thirty years ago, Claudia Schiffer (alongside Beverly Peele, Kirsty Hume, Brandi Quiñones and Helena Christensen) helped Karl Lagerfeld weaponise chiffon, lace and sass beyond belief as the Chloé girl transcended dull clichés of one dimensional femininity. Much like Chemena Kamali’s lace seen décolletage’d across Schiffer, this was maximal girl power with willful panache. Kamali knows this characteristic well, having grown up in (while obsessing over) the house. So she captivates using mosaics of the past — Karl’s Chloé with Claudia; Stella McCartney’s Chloé pineapple; Phoebe Philo’s Chloé jewelry with the glint of vintage. Capsules of history serve as momentum for Kamali’s evocation of a 1995 feminine forcefulness seducing our modern times to unwind amidst sand, sea and hammock.
In 2025, we say High Summer. In 2025, we say Chloé à la Plage.
‘Protect The Dolls’ Designer Headlines BFC/NEWGEN Lineup
The British Fashion Council (BFC) has announced the latest recipient of its support scheme that spotlights emerging to established designers, we hope, will shape the future of British fashion. Enter New York-born designer Conner Ives, who wins the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund. Known for collections balancing kitsch and camp equally, Ives will receive a £150,000 grant and business mentorship. His win came against a formidable shortlist including Di Petsa and Dilara Fındıkoğlu.
The BFC Foundation’s NEWGEN scheme tends to usher in a bold new wave of creatives. Its list of legends includes Boudicca, Kim Jones, Jonathan Saunders, Christopher Kane, Marios Schwab and Meadham Kirchhoff. Joining them for 25-26 will be a range of returning designers including Tolu Coker, Derrick, Johanna Parv and Steve O Smith. The new NEWGEN features womenswear designers Aletta and Ewusie, along with Fashion East’s Louther and deadstock rebel Liza Keane. Knitwear innovator Oscar Ouyang and jewellery disruptors The Ouze and Octi round out a class defined by a big Ouyang quality of craft with clarity. The energy is unmistakable: change agents choosing fashion design as weaponry to evolve, an urgency to redefine, the look and feel of British fashion today. Armed with £1.2 million allocated from education, grants and mentorship, the BFC Foundation seems willing to invest in tomorrow, today.
Stella McCartney Sees Gen F In LA
Stella McCartney (re)introduces Generation Falabella, a limited-edition capsule collection reviving its 2009 original icon luxe release for a new generation. Shot in Los Angeles, the campaign celebrates youthful freedom, featuring Role Model (you know, Tucker), Odessa A’zion and Quen Blackwell. Together, they form Stella McCartney’s Gen F, a trio united by alliterative friendship, fashion, and free-spirited qualities. While the Falabella gets its name from the founder’s favourite pony, bag details were reimagined with embellishments and energy, nodding to its rock ‘n’ roll DNA corralled inside the rodeo of youthful, devil-may-care style.
Role Model seeks to redefine masculinity by blending pop music with legit conversations around mental health. A’zion and Blackwell are friends and acting partners, tapped for an upcoming Rachel Sennott project. They all bring grit to McCartney’s latest activation. Every Falabella in the capsule is crafted from cruelty-free materials, underscoring Stella McCartney’s unwavering ethos since day one, 2001.
Valentino Offers Up A New Bag For Summer
Valentino creative director Alessandro Michele continues to weave poetic spontaneity into the everyday with Valentino’s latest campaign for the Garavani Nellcôte bag, this time using outdoor music festivals as an idyllic daydream. Imagery around the new Garavani Nellcôte anticipates the haze of a meadow in summertime. Camaraderie is both mood and mood board. The photographer Julie Greve captures fledgling moments in action — a hula hoop in foggy stop-motion halo; limbs in proximity towards a collective gaze. While Michele revisits Garavani Nellcôte’s lineage with updated embroidery, metalwork and velvet grained calf.
The Nellcôte rests effortlessly idle across bodies in an emblematic carefree lean. The campaign drifts into implicit intentions — perhaps a kiss, possibly a laugh, perchance a Valentino bag — it’s all just kinda there. The Nellcôte exists in a cherry bomb popsicle flavour. It does not speak of summer nor marshy, muddy outdoor concerts. It suggests a pastiche of what sweet anticipation feels like.
Modern Matter: The Jonio Edit
Olu Odukoya, friend of SHOWstudio and Modern Matter founder, has just released a collaborative revisiting of the publication’s art intercepts across 10 years with fabled designer Jun Takahashi of Undercover. In conversation with each other, Odukoya and Takahashi look back on the 2010s using mixed media and academic curriculum thematics to reinterpret what came before, transformed into what bridges art, style and design today: curiosity. This is the magazine that dedicated an issue to Stella Tennant, using the homonym ‘stellar’ to unite creative luminaries Mark Borthwick, Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul McCarthy AND Stella Tennant together. They examined what constituted intrepid creativity. It was a very good issue. This new project contains a wearable article (see below) with an exclusive MM zine, likely offering BTS of the works that inspired Odukoya and Jonio minds to meet.
The Modern Matter magazine and t-shirt will be available at the Undercover official online store, in UNDERCOVER stores throughout Japan plus at Dover Street Market London from the 15th to the 18th.
DSM Does Photo London
In support of Photo London from 15 to 18 May, Dover Street Market activities are activating. DSM does Photo London much in the way you’d expect — collaborative drops and visual-minded installations featuring the best their branded roster of talented designers can offer up. The ground floor presents (or maybe re-presents if this relates back to Kawakubo-san’s 1994 stuff) a window installation designed by Rei Kawakubo featuring the work of Cindy Sherman in collaboration with Ursula Magazine. While longtime DSM resident Simone Rocha’s work for AnOther Magazine #48 by Colin Dodgson and Robbie Spencer gets featured. The week’s biggest drop from A$AP Nast and Comme Des Garçons SHIRT is located on floor 1 while fun exclusives from the best British menswear designers today, Stefan Cooke, are on floor 2. That intense, but delightful Crafted World book from Loewe is skulking around 2, too. Issue number 9 of Beauty Papers, featuring the work of death notes commentator Maggie Hambling, is on floor 3. The issue is sold out most places so move quickly. That floor also has the new Worms recipe book, with a link here to receive chef Mafruha Ahmed’s secrets the book did not bind. Odds and ends see a Chopova Lowena exclusive in the DSM basement plus a Grime installation photo chronicle by Simon Wheatley (also on BF). It all adds up to fashion and art coalesced at a place you’d end up anyways on a Saturday afternoon. Also, check out our official Photo London Guide from SHOWstudio arts & culture editor Christina Donoghue. We at SHOWnews are not above a little cross-promotion.
For a full list of the exclusives from DSM London for Photo London, click here.
Hello Summer Capsules
Capsule collections rise in line with summer temperatures. To note this week, Etro's creative director Marco de Vicenzo has collaborated with Italian contemporary artist Agostino Iacurci, applying his signature murals to the perfect leather carry-on as part of the brand's Mediterranean-inspired Summer 2025 collection.
Also upping the ante for the luxury beach holiday wardrobe are Ukrainian brand Nué Studio, who have launched swimwear for the first time, alongside their signature draped and sculpted dresses.
London's very own Rosh Mahtani of Alighieri, known for the bejewelled talismans, has worked with J. Crew on Modern Heirlooms. Made in Hatton Garden (fancy!), Mahtani was 'Inspired by summer days on the water, I wanted this capsule to celebrate the magic of seaside adventures, a life unlocked at sea, in oversized white shirts and molten gold fish.'
