Fashion in 2024: everything to look forward to

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What to look forward to in fashion in 2024 (so far), from an intriguing Met Gala theme to a blockbuster Apple TV+ drama on Christian Dior and his post-war fashion milieu

While even the most fastidious of forecasters could not predict with any certainty the ins and outs of the coming year in style – and the clothing we’ll be desiring when the year is out – there remains plenty we do already know about fashion in 2024, whether the usual roll-call of designer moves and debuts, the arrival of a star-studded Apple TV+ drama on Christian Dior and his mid-century milieu, or an intriguing, century-spanning theme for this year’s Met Gala

On the cusp of a new year, everything to look forward to in fashion in 2024 (so far)

Fashion in 2024: what to look forward to (so far)

A roll-call of designers will make their debuts

Fashion’s merry-go-round continued in 2023 with a slew of designer exits, among them Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen, Gabriela Hearst at Chloé, and earlier this month, Matthew M Williams, who said goodbye to Givenchy

As such – although the latter’s successor is so far unnamed – there will be a roll-call of designers making their debut at major houses in 2024. Watch out for Seán McGirr at Alexander McQueen (the northern Irish designer was formerly head of menswear at JW Anderson), Chemena Kamali at Chloé (she returns to the house where she started her career after working at Saint Laurent), and former Tod’s creative director Walter Chiapponi who will begin his tenure at Blumarine (while at Tod’s, he is succeeded by Matteo Tamburini, most recently of Bottega Veneta)

A number of these debuts – particularly McGirr’s – will likely spark conversation from both those inside and outside of the fashion ranks after the designer’s appointment raised questions about the continued prevalence of white, male creative directors (an Instagram post from a London-based publication on the subject by 1 Granary, posted just after McGirr’s appointment, went viral on the subject). Recruiters at Givenchy will no doubt have this on their minds when selecting Williams’ successor

Dresses at Met Museum

Loewe A/W 2023 dresses, with a 1958 evening ensemble by Nina Ricci in the centre. They will feature in ’Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met Gala theme is all about sleeping beauties

Following 2023’s ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ – a blockbuster exhibition on the inimitable German designer’s expansive oeuvre, from Chloé to Chanel – this year’s annual Costume Institute exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is altogether more abstract. Titled ’Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ (May 10 – September 2, 2024), it will comprise 250 garments – spanning designers, centuries and countries – promising a reexamination of ‘masterworks’ from the museum’s collection using cutting-edge technology, from X-ray to AI

Meanwhile, the sensory elements of the various items – and the eras in which they originated – will be highlighted in immersive ‘activations’ conveying ‘the smells, sounds, textures, and motions of garments that can no longer directly interact with the body’. Loewe will be the year’s fashion sponsor, with Jonathan Anderson’s ghostly Gerhard Richter-inspired dresses from the house’s A/W 2023 show – simple silk shifts printed with the ‘memories’ of previous garments – will feature in the exhibition. On the red carpet, meanwhile – the exhibition is celebrated by the accompanying Met Gala on the first Monday in May – the somewhat indeterminate theme, will no doubt provide some interesting (and outré) looks from the phalanx of celebrities who attend each year

Christian Dior’s life will be explored in new Apple TV+ show

Dramatisations and biopics of fashion designer’s lives have been somewhat patchy – perhaps the best in recent years, A Phantom Thread, was entirely fictionalised – though an upcoming television series on Apple TV+ has a promising pedigree. Titled ‘The New Look’, the Todd A. Kessler-created show – a director and screenwriter

who worked on The Sopranos and Damages, earning a slew of Emmys – will explore the lives of Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and several other of the era’s designers in the wake of World War II and the occupation of France. The title refers to Dior’s ‘New Look’ – epitomised by his narrow-waisted bar jacket and full, abundant skirt – a riposte to the restraint of the war era and a silhouette which would define mid-century fashion

An award-winning cast – first revealed this past November – will take on the well-known roster of characters, including Emmy winner Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior, Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel, Maisie Williams as Catherine Dior, the couturier’s sister, and John Malkovich as French couturier Lucien Lelong. Meanwhile, an ‘immersive and contemporary’ soundtrack is created by Grammy Award winner Jack Antonoff, the producer behind albums by Lana del Rey, Taylor Swift and Lorde

So far, so intriguing – the series will premiere on February 14, 2024 on Apple TV+, just in time for fashion month (expect it to be a front-row talking point)

Magliano S/S 2024

Luca Magliano’s S/S 2024 collection. The Bologna-based designer which show as part of Pitti Uomo

At Pitti, two guest designers who explore queer life and class

Though the centrepiece of Pitti Uomo is the vast exhibition centre in the 14th-century Fortezza da Basso – which sees brands from around the world pitch up to display their latest collections – it is the Florentine menswear fair’s ‘guest designers’ which provide its most intriguing moments. Previous editions have hosted shows from the likes of Raf Simons, Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner, Jonathan Anderson and Craig Green alongside fashion houses Givenchy, Jil Sander and Fendi

This season, two young designers – from Italy and the UK respectively – will show their latest collections as guests of the fair. The first is Bologna-born Luca Magliano, whose eponymous label Magliano has won plaudits – including the LVMH Prize’s Karl Lagerfeld Prize – for its skewed, irreverent plays on classic Italian dress codes, deeply rooted in his beloved hometown where he continues to live and work (’provincia’ is the word he uses to describe his fascination with regional eccentricities). Bologna’s history of protest – particularly among the large student and working-class community – also informs his liberatory collections, as does growing up within the city’s queer and subcultural scenes. He will show at the Nelson Mandela Forum, a stadium to the east of Florence

Steven Stokey-Daley – founder of S.S. Daley – also explores class and sexuality through theatrical collections which are informed by his observations of the British upper classes, both real and imagined (while at university in London, his campus would look out on the playing fields of public school Harrow; Stokey-Daley describes himself as ‘a working class boy’). Collections have riffed on the upstairs-downstairs archetype in Britsh culture and literature, with figures like Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville West and Evelyn Waugh inspiring his collections. He has chosen the perennial Florence landmark Palazzo Vecchio to show his A/W 2024 collection

Alexander McQueen show with Naomi Campbell on runway

Naomi Campbell closing Alexander McQueen’s S/S 2024 show in Paris. The supermodel is the subject of a V&A exhibition opening June 2024

Two UK exhibitions will celebrate the greats of British fashion

A duo of exhibitions, opening in March and June respectively, will tell the stories behind some of Britain’s most widely-known fashion names. The first, which takes place at the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, is titled ‘Icons of British Style’ (23 March – 30 June, 2024) and will see garments from a wide-ranging array of designers and brands – from Vivienne Westwood and Stephen Jones to Stella McCartney and Barbour – alongside an accompanying array of archival materials, drawings, photography and pattern pieces. Though the draw is undoubtedly the surroundings, with the exhibition winding through Blenheim’s great hall and through the palace, which has a longtime link to fashion – in 1954, Christian Dior hosted a couture show in the home for style-conscious members of Britain’s aristocracy (in a nod to its heritage, Jones’ millinery for Dior will feature)

The second, at London’s V&A Museum, takes Naomi Campbell as its subject, promising an unprecedented glimpse into the British supermodel’s life and wardrobe as she celebrates four decades in fashion (born in Lambeth, she was discovered by Pennington Models aged just 15). Titled ‘Naomi’ (22 June – 6 April 2025), the no-doubt high-octane exhibition will be a glamourous walk-through her career, promising cameos from the seminal designers who shaped her as a model – among them Gianni Versace, Azzedine Alaïa and Yves Saint Laurent, whose clothes will also feature in the exhibition. A vast array of photography, curated by former British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, will appear alongside, while footage of her legendary runway walk, will no doubt feature

10 Corso Como store

10 Corso Como in Milan, which will be renovated by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli in 2024

While in Milan, a seminal fashion store will be reborn

10 Corso Como is one of Milan’s – indeed, fashion’s – most well-known addresses, the site of Carla Sozzani’s 1980-founded store-café-cum-hotel-cum-cultural outpost of the same name. In 2024, the store will get a makeover of sorts in a project titled ‘Rethinking 10 Corso Como’ which promises to create a ‘wunderkammer’ or cabinet of curiosities in the space, alongside a thriving program of events (these will include exhibitions curated by art critic Alessandro Rabottini and fashion lecturer and curator Alessio de’ Navasques)

The heavy architectural lifting, meanwhile, will be done by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli – a former OMA partner and president of the international jury at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition – who will renovate the space through a series of ‘micro-interactions’ which will allow visits to seamlessly transition between the various zones. The work began in November 2023, with the new 10 Corso Como being revealed in stages beginning in spring 2024. Watch this space

Jack Moss

Fashion Features Editor

Jack Moss is the Fashion Features Editor at Wallpaper*, joining the team in 2022. Having previously been the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 and 10 Men magazines, he has also contributed to titles including i-D, Dazed, 10 Magazine, Mr Porter’s The Journal and more, while also featuring in Dazed: 32 Years Confused: The Covers, published by Rizzoli. He is particularly interested in the moments when fashion intersects with other creative disciplines – notably art and design – as well as championing a new generation of international talent and reporting from international fashion weeks. Across his career, he has interviewed the fashion industry’s leading figures, including Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Christian Lacroix, Kate Moss and Manolo Blahnik

Paul Smith’s Claridge’s Christmas tree is a playful slice of ‘countryside in the centre of London’

Sir Paul Smith is the latest in a long line of fashion designers to curate the iconic Claridge’s Christmas tree. Here, he talks to Wallpaper* about the inspiration behind the tree, which features bird boxes and wooden animals

And so it begins: the unveiling of the Claridge’s Christmas tree has long heralded the start of the festive season, seeing the London hotel – and bastion of British hospitality – drafting a roll-call of the world’s best-known designers and brands to curate the iconic display. There has been an enormous stack of tree-shaped trunks (courtesy of Louis Vuitton) a futuristic crystalline cone (designed by Dior Men designer Kim Jones), and an ensemble of gold and silver umbrellas (by Christopher Bailey, created during his tenure as creative director of Burberry). Others have been designed by Karl Lagerfeld, Alber Elbaz, and John Galliano, among others

This year it is the turn of another British institution, the fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, a longtime patron of Claridge’s (‘My wife Pauline and I have been staying and dining at Claridge’s for many years,’ he says). Unveiled today in the lobby of the hotel, his playful take on tradition comprises a 19ft Christmas tree adorned with 100 wooden bird boxes, alongside a multitude of glimmering baubles and bows (the latter in Smith’s colourful ‘signature stripe’). Befitting Smith’s off-kilter approach – which is defined by a bold use of colour and oftentimes humourous take on traditional British dress codes – the bird boxes feature elements like playing-card rooftops, or are adorned with playing cards or dice

Paul Smith unveils his Claridge’s Christmas Tree

Paul Smith Claridge’s Christmas Tree

The 19-foot tree, which has been erected in the hotel’s famed lobby

‘I wanted the tree to have a sense of open spaces and the countryside, the feeling of fresh air even though the tree is in the centre of London,’ Smith tells Wallpaper* of the tree’s playful design, which was conceived together with the artist Nik Ramage and Studiomama. Ramage – a longtime collaborator with Smith – describes his work as a ‘sculptor of the useless and absurd’, largely taking functional objects and incorporating them into strange, surreal machines (a mechanical ‘jelly wobbler’, for example, or a wooden head which endlessly bangs against a brick). ‘Nik is an artist we work with and he’s very creative and crafts surprises with everyday objects,’ says Smith. ‘He reminds me of the way my father used to work in his little garden shed, making things for the family out of scraps

While Ramage worked on the tree’s bird boxes, it was Nina Tolstrup and Jack Mama’s east London-based studio Studiomama who created the magical menagerie of wooden animals (in the vein of their own Off-Cuts series), which are gathered at the base of the tree. ‘They take off-cuts of wood that they find in the local workshop and make these marvellous fantasy animals out of them which is so charming and fun,’ Smith continues. The tree was unveiled by Smith this morning (20 November 2024), though a lucky few guests – including Wallpaper* – got a preview yesterday evening, with a luxury sleepover at Claridge’s to toast the occasion

Wallpaper