The Fashion Resistance

From strong-shouldered power suits to Matrix-adjacent looks and fashion armour, feminine empowerment was the key takeaway of the fall/winter 2022 collections, reports Patty Huntington

It wasn’t quite the reunion the fashion pack had anticipated. Twenty-fourth February, the day Russian troops commenced their assault on Ukraine, was the second day of Milan Fashion Week and the halfway point of a season that represented the biggest return to the traditional, physical runway show format since

Covid-19 shut down the world in early 2020. Planeloads of international buyers, journalists, photographers, celebrities and models had reassembled on the circuit in numbers not seen in two years, over the moon to be back in the business of fabulousness. Then came Putin’s reality check. “My decision not to use any music was taken as a sign of respect towards the people involved in the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine,” tweeted Giorgio Armani, the first designer to respond publicly to the crisis, after dispatching his models down the runway in total silence. Balenciaga wiped its entire Instagram feed, its only social media activity in the lead up to its 6 March show in Paris being a request for people to donate to the World Food Programme.

“In a time like this, fashion loses its relevance and its actual right to exist. Fashion Week feels like some kind of an absurdity,” read the show notes of Balenciaga Creative Director Demna, for whom the matter was personal. The conflict triggered his own memories of fleeing the Georgian civil war in 1993, initially to Ukraine, as a 10-year-old refugee. After initially considering cancelling the show altogether, he later concluded that that would mean “giving in”. Tweaking his original show concept, which had been intended as a statement on another global crisis—climate change—Demna delivered a dystopian tour de force that was hailed by many as the season’s defining show.