SHOWnews: Chloé Girls On Film, Dries For 4 Scents, Kiko's New Jeans And More

A Dries Van Noten Fragrance Tapestry

In a sprawling city, let’s call it Lierlia, streets are paved with gilded cobblestones and the air is tinged with a magical scent of mystery. Fragrances from Lierlia are more than mere perfumes. They imbue an unreal, olfactory essence holding the power to transform lives and reshape destinies. Lierlia is a city of contrasts. Old-world charm is in concert with the fantastical. The city centre — a market of scented wonders, is a bastion of aromatic spices. Each scent tells a story, a reflection of Lierlia's creative soul for an incandescent journey through life.

Today, four new eaux de parfums have emerged from Lierlia’s renowned fragrance artisan, Dries Van Noten. These vessels of extraordinary craft retain Van Noten’s unique art curiosities and visionary exploration. The new scents — Vanille Camouflage, Crazy Basil, Camomille Satin, and Bitter Splash — unlock unknown realms and untold adventures:

Vanille Camouflage is an elusive fragrance whose bottle shimmers like translucent sunlight filtering through the leaves in late summer. Its power blends nature into notes that surprise with a bourbon butterscotch raindrop.

Crazy Basil invigorates with the sharpness of basil and vibrant cedarwood. This combination ignites passion to those who inhale it. A tool for extremes, minimalism and magic, its values are imprinted across the verdant bottle in Bauhaus blocks of green.

Camomille Satin drapes an aroma of calm and elegance throughout Lierlian’s marketplace. Dark vanilla bean essences fuse harmony with time in nonstop transition. Sophistication is achieved through brocade, bronze, metal interplays onto a bottle containing the elixir for a tactile, yet fashionable, way of life.

Bitter Splash measures exotic and ornamental contrasts. Tinged with bitter grapefruit yet sweet pomelo, the fragrant truth and decorative panorama across the bottle seduce with navigation, yearning for unknown escapism.

Discover your fragrant new narrative when Dries Van Noten eaux de parfum launches on 19 August.

Balenciaga 3X Sneaker Puckers Up For The Camera

Since rising from the mud two years ago, the Balenciaga 3XL Sneaker has been Demna’s active example for muddy luxury sittin’ on (mono) chrome…and sometimes kissing pink. On 20 August, Balenciaga highlighted the statement-making 3XL Sneaker in a campaign shot by Chris Lensz. The eggshell colourway, which sold out on Balenciaga’s website the day of release, is captured in domestic sitting portraits resembling your ‘fun’ cousins visiting an Amish family home in the 90s. Wide shots serve this shoe best to highlight a bulky design with layered materials to give the upper visual interest and distressing, which suggests the muddy depths it originated from. Just be sure to ask BFRND’s cousins to wash their hands before passing the apple butter.

Skepta Puts Puma On His Set

This past Monday, Skepta hosted a London ride out (a large group bicycling event) to promote the second half of his Skope Forever two-wheel deal with Puma. In May, Puma’s vaunted brand ambassador released an iridescent colourway of mesh and opalescent foil paneling. It is the type of shoe you grab when ‘Got to Keep On’ by Chemical Brothers starts your playlist. Skope Forever volume 2 is much different.

Come 24 August, rave resets to hip-hop as camel-coated beige and Puma’s ‘Black Ice’ schema remix the Skope Forever vibe with a touch of ‘Graftin’ by Dizzee Rascal…you know full well what those streets are like. So go bike.

Kiko Kostadinov and Levi’s® Partner For New Jeans

Funny are the things you identify, or don’t, when you ignore most show notes. During the tail end of Kiko Kostadinov’s A/W 24 menswear show, a look trundled out. Unmistakably old-school Kiko lumbered past in a charcoal denim drill ‘suit’ with geometric darts on each selvedge (post-2019 costume drama Kiko). It recalled the workwear vibe from the collection’s first third. Since again, I don’t often read show notes, the whole Levi’s® Engineered Jeans™ reprise kinda whizzed past my skin head. This re-engineering of Levi’s® moments from the 90s finds its identity in Levi’s® denim darts and Kiko Bulgarian diamond ‘eyes’ to frame the darts. Removing A/W 24 Kostadinov items from the equation still leaves the imprint of Kiko utility inside a Levi’s® framework.

Kiko yanks the back shoulder yoke forward to trim the silhouette of a denim jacket. Laura and Deanna Fanning assault their trademark strategic tailoring anarchy to generate a Kiko Levi’s® female identity from a bifurcated shearling denim suit. It all comes down to orthodoxies of past and present. Kiko Kostadinov’s strident menswear voice and Levi’s® history appear a quite obvious merger, even if you don’t often read shownotes.

Daily Paper Presents ‘Sensory Overload’

For sixteen years, Black-owned, Amsterdam-based Daily Paper has shown how incorporating graphic design, distinctive tastes and reverence for African heritage makes a friend group stand out from success. Today Daily Paper boasts a €30 million annual turnover, a London flagship location (Amsterdam and NY too) and a new A/W 24 product offering. Titled ‘Sensory Overload,’ Daily Paper keeps visual stories from the African diaspora consistent in the new collection by using the origin logo shield as darting techniques across Bomi denim jackets and damask jacquard printed across the Zora skirt, Asola Amba and Asola Avery trousers. Track jackets in velvet cinch the silhouette to contrast formal and relaxed shapes. Faux Fur is Daily Paper’s success story this time out as shearlings go ultra cozy with lammy fabrications — the look of shearling meets the feeling of foam — in roomy double-breasted shapes. Expert graphic usage explains how ‘Sensory Overload’ encourages alternative paths to chill through long walks, keeping hydrated or upping your smoothie game. Get in touch with your natural self in September, on that long walk to the Daily Paper London shop to check out their new collection. If digital overstimulation is still your thing, get in your DTC bag today as ‘Sensory Overload’ launches online.

Chloé Campaign Breathes Intimacy

Chloé creative director Chemena Kamali’s first catwalk show was a personal favourite for fall. Once those Bat For Lashes percussions heralded look one (i.e. the return of our cherished Chloé girl), there might have been a wide grin. And so it is no surprise that Kamali brought her intuitive skill at orchestrating feelings into a tangible Chloé psychosis — the Rive Gauche, insouciance, the eternal ‘bohemienne’ — to a cinematic sensuality for her winter 2024 campaign. Alongside Kamali’s vision, photographer David Sims and renowned art director Ezra Petronio bring an alchemical approach to diffuse an overtly feminine attitude across Kaia Gerber in gestures. Kaia, coincidentally(?) wearing catwalk look one, is a Chloé portal of feelings concentrated within a light breeze and subtle glance away from the camera. We see Karl Lagerfeld’s flou, Claire Waight Keller’s capes. We see Stella McCartney’s jewelry. We feel it all. In Rianne Van Rompaey's image, Chemena Kamali’s tacit introduction of house history using her innate sense of having lived with Chloé obsession is why it all works. Like the house founder Gaby Aghion, Kamali lives the life she loves. No oversimplification required.