ARCHIVE.pdf, in collaboration with photographer Angela Ricciardi, presents our exclusive backstage coverage of Ann Demeulemeester’s Spring/Summer 2025 show.

Behind the scenes at Ann Demeulemeester S/S '25

Since the brand’s purchase by Claudio Antonioli in 2020, the house has been working to reconnect to its archive and the work of its founder. Appointed in 2023, creative director Stefano Gallici has begun to build his own vision for Ann Demeulemeester, balancing his reverence for its founder and his desire to bring the brand into the future. Community and music have been central to Gallici’s vision, as he has brought together a creative community of artists, designers, and musicians around the house. 
	That love of music was on full display for Spring 2025, with guitarist Marco Fusinato opening the show with a distorted, droning performance. The collection which followed showed Gallici weaving between archival homages and contemporary aesthetics. Reissued pieces included: an off-shoulder mohair sweater, originally from Fall 2005; embroidered lace pieces, originally from Spring 2007; and a sharpened, severe rework of the strapped pirate boots from Spring 2003. 

Amelia Walker, womenswear designer for the brand and former Carol Christian Poell assistant, talked us through the design process for the collection. Stefano sought to balance rigid tailoring with something soft and draped, leading to the juxtaposition of strong-shouldered jackets with bias-cut draped pieces. Dresses had modular strap systems that allow the wearer to alter the height of the neckline and length of the hem – “It’s really supposed to look like it’s falling off the body.” That same bias draping was present on another skirt, with a leg slit that emulated that same sense of “falling off” while in motion. The challenge for the collection was to find the right mix of disheveled “morning after” messiness and chic elegance. Complex layering by stylist Elodie David aided this, and led to the creation of some of the distressed jersey pieces. The pieces were distressed just before the show by her and Gallici, creating holes that reveal the layers of fabrics underneath. This balance of sophistication and chaos recalled the rockstar sensibilities Stefano so lovingly seeks to capture with his clothes.  

The most modernized looks included signature Demeulemeester Victorian blouses paired with massive baggy denim – Walker says these denim pieces have been a big commercial success for the brand, and that the team appreciates customers stepping on the hems and tearing them up through wear. These looks, however contemporary, were rooted back in the brand’s history through makeup done by Belgian legend Inge Grognard, the omnipresent Antwerp makeup artist whose touch is felt in the work of countless Royal Academy graduates. 

Included in our coverage are photographs shot by Angela Ricciardi that depict both backstage and the runway show itself, and a behind-the-scenes short film. 


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Ann Demulemeester S/S 2025 Backstage

Keywords such as “deconstruction,” “subversion,” or “avant-garde” often lean more towards the ready-made analysis of Rei Kawakubo’s designs, rather than reflecting genuine paradigms of creation. This may call for a more rigorous reading of the issues she mobilizes with each collection, while still acknowledging the persistence of practical and technical articulations that, for their part, remain intact.

*Comme des Garçons A/W 2025 Womenswear Collection. Photography by Nikita Laganovskis (@nikitalaganovskis).*

The subtext of A/W 2025 offers an entry point that the garment itself clarifies: “Recently we feel that big business, big culture, global systems, world structures maybe are not so great after all. There is also strong value in small. Small can be mighty.” 

This idea is conveyed through an exacerbation of volume and a geometry rendered relentless, imposed upon the various models. Fabrics such as Prince of Wales checks, tartan, and blue striped suits — characteristics of institutional or bureaucratic wardrobes — are here made supple, distended, and almost dreamlike, offering an easy analogy with the Möbius strip. Indeed, through twisting and hypertrophy, these garments carry both the monumental nature they evoke while simultaneously signifying a critique of that very monumentalism. The theatrical figures with velvet pleats, characters with oversized and asymmetrical skirts and drapings, are so many illustrations of a symbolic power increase that, once overwhelming, reveals its sometimes burlesque nature. The discourse on 'small' finds an echo in the meticulousness and skill evident in each papier-mâché headpiece, each assemblage of tulle with draping, where nothing seems left to chance.

*Junya Watanabe A/W 2025 Womenswear Collection. Photography by Thian Benton Fieulaine (@tbfieulaine).*

The filiation of Watanabe’s work is unequivocal. His A/W 2025 collection stands as an homage and an explicit love letter to Jimi Hendrix, the collection emulating rock archetypes with a flourish of zippered denim or leather jackets, long-haired textures and sunglasses. The show’s music also anchors the collection within the framework of a reminiscence, from which the designer’s earliest memories of fashion took place. The music corresponds to the 2024 release of a series of previously unreleased Hendrix studio sessions, which propelled Watanabe several years into the past through this vivid Madeleine de Proust.

But opting for cosplay or a faithful reproduction of the archetype in question would be far too simple. Watanabe, in turn, seeks out another framework, another standard for reinscribing clothing as material of distortion and alteration: Cubism. Perfectos, trench coats, or bombers (pillars of the contemporary wardrobe) feature oversized pyramidal protrusions, immense rectangular structures enveloping shoulders or hips. Frames and visible armatures are incorporated, converting the daily wardrobe into a terrain for spectacle, deformity, or play. (Still on the idea of paradoxes existing in the same space : underneath the extreme jackets were a lot of really wearable clothes.) The mode of fragmentation, the process of accentuation, is noticeably similar to Kawakubo’s; let’s just say the focal point is placed on different emblems. The pinnacle of this exercise in deformation perhaps finds form in the jacket composed of two inverted Dr. Martens boots replacing the sleeves, a radicalization of the perfecto’s distortion that borders on the absurd. As a structural matrix, the piece suspends functionality in favor of a deliberate interrogation of its formal and symbolic dimensions.

*Noir Kei Ninomiya A/W 2025 Womenswear Collection. Photography by Puck Cato Verheul (@puck_verheul).*

The positioning of the Noir show is different, and attempting to outline a thematic triptych would amount to excessive generalization. Almost the entire show unfolds to a dissonant piano procession by Yasuaki Itakura. It is upon this absence of melody that figures emerge, their lexicon rooted in biomorphism, the imitation of natural forms through technical materials. This is made explicit through glossy resins and plasticized fringes reminiscent of scales or feathers, while the towering 3D-printed headpieces recall antlers. Ultimately, this combination of craftsmanship and complex material expression allows, as Ninomiya has demonstrated for over a decade, for clothing to be treated as an organic growth around the body, where symbiosis always operates on a sensitive plane. 

The final two minutes of the show form a last, colorful act: the erratically played piano notes vanish, giving way to a techno-infused 'Ode to Joy' by Hakushi Hasegawa, a longtime collaborator of Ninomiya. Models adorned with ribbons, rainbows, and pompoms contrast with the rest of the collection. It marks a return to a stance evoking childhood, carefreeness, or at the very least, a less frictional position — an almost escapist shift, far less imbued with apprehension or vertigo than the opening. One will recall that similar thematic concerns were already at work in earlier collections by Ninomiya, the closest being A/W ’24. The presence of a childhood grammar (hula hoops, scoubidous, rainbow tutus) was then rendered diffuse across the entire set of looks. This time, it is reaffirmed as a final tour de force in A/W 2025, tending toward an understanding of the “small” as the visual discourse of an age carried by playfulness, bliss, and a sense of calm.

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When form and proportion allow each designer to reflect on grotesque power, distorted archetypes and the organic.

Beyond Monumentalism: Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, & Noir Kei Ninomiya A/W 2025

Angela Ricciardi

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View Angela Ricciardi's contributions at ARCHIVE.pdf.

Angela Ricciardi

Photographer

Ann Demulemeester S/S 2025 Backstage

Creative Producer

Beyond Monumentalism: Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, & Noir Kei Ninomiya A/W 2025