The most talked-about collection of the Spring/Summer 2024 fashion shows was the one that wasn’t there. Phoebe Philo had yet to unveil the first results of her eponymous line, which was set to debut online in September, nearly six years after leaving Celine and dominating the fashion news cycle throughout the month. As Spring/Summer 2024 fashion trends piled up, designers nervously waited to see if theirs would be overshadowed by a spontaneous digital drop by the woman many revere as fashion’s savior.
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Her cult status as an industry savior was further enhanced by the news that Spring/Summer 2024 will be Sarah Burton’s last collection for Alexander McQueen and that Gabriela Hearst will also be leaving Chloé. New appointees include Sabato de Sarno at Gucci, Peter Hawkings at Tom Ford, Peter Do at Helmut Lang, and Louise Trotter at Carven. Does fashion have a female designer problem? At LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods conglomerate, only Dior and Pucci have female creative directors, while Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo run their namesake brands. At Kering, the world’s second-largest fashion conglomerate, not a single brand is helmed by a woman or a person of color.
Against a backdrop of demoralizing inequality and an equally grim economic and political backdrop, designers played it safe for Spring/Summer 2024. The palette was muted, with the color-box brights that typically come to the forefront of summer collections obscured by black and white. A retina-searing red was one of the few hues that managed to slip through the muted color wheel. The post-pandemic era of body positivity, and the nude look that came with it, has all but faded, and with it, the wider range of body types that had begun to flood the runways.
