Ann Demeulemeester. Fall 2024 - PAris Fashion Week.

Reiterating from my Spring 2024 review of the Ann Demeulemeester franchise, as it continues on without the famed Belgium designer who retired in 2010, handing the reins to French fashion designer Sébastien Meunier, who left the label in 2020 after retailer mongel Claudio Antonioli bought the Ann Demeulemeester brand name.  In a vain effort to reanimate Ann Demeulemeester's 1990s stylisations.  As noted in my review, it may have been prudent, before the resurrection of the Ann Demeulemeester gothic inclination, to ritually clear the brand name prior to redefining it.

As both Demeulemeester's feminine goth romanticism, and then Meunier's more focused Byronic antihero, encapsulated that very appealing 18th, 19th Century poetic darkness of the misunderstood and misaligned rebel.  Maintaining a stalwart following amongst the many goths who could afford a Demeulemeester and Meunier ensemble.  Newcomer Stefano Gallici, with just one season under his belt, has attempted to raise the bar into a more darker, and intensified element to the iconic goth brand.  

For his Fall 2024 collection, Gallici has instilled an enduring myth of Western folklore, and one of the most intriguing, the vampiric legend.  From the medieval fear in trying to understand the spread of pathogens, through to the seductive and brooding mysterious stranger.  Gallici has indeed revamped the vampiric into a more stylized gesture, that one would be more familiar with rather than the early 20th Century dashing villain.   Our beloved vampires of today have transcended sexuality, offer androgenity and are filled with sexual paradoxes that is their complex persona.  Hence, Gallici latest array has possibly set a renewed precedence for the Ann Demeulemeester brand name. 

And there is certainly a dark eros to the collection, a carnal undertone inserted into its stygian overtures.  A sleek, yet tough and enduring collection, to which a vampire essentially is, despite their invulnerabilities they are not entirely immortal.  With their sombre resolve of aging slowly, whilst holding onto immortally as a last gasp, time creates a tiredness.  The modern day vampire, with all its mythos attached, despite reveling in its powers, is trapped within the angst of longevity.  As the earlier manifestation of popular culture saw the vampire to be a monster, in the last Fifty years, the vampiric character of the now is more akin to a perpetuation of addiction.  The forever need or curse to satisfy the thirst for blood, and death could be their final release.

Gallici may have indeed opened a revitalized mystique for Ann Demeulemeester.  Yet, only time will truly tell.

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(A.Glass 2024)