For its Fall/Winter ‘24 Womenswear collection, JW Anderson invited guests to the Seymour Leisure Centre, a facility that offers a gym, swimming pool, fitness studio, and more. However, the brand wasn’t tempted to lace up its sneakers and try out the facilities, instead, it was slipping into cozy slippers.
With each look that walked down the makeshift runway in the London-based leisure center was a pair of slip-on house shoes that, for the most part, came with a cozy shearling lining.
And it wasn’t just the footwear that looked like it was part of an English Grandma’s staple everyday outfit. There were also knitted dresses, English tweeds, and trench coats, all twisted and manipulated through oversized shapes, knotted details, and draping.
Not to mention the grey, curly wigs that many of the models sported, solidifying the feeling of Grandma cosplay.
The collection notes provided by a brand are often a good place to start understanding the inner thoughts of a designer. This season, JW Anderson handed attendees a short poem that began and ended with: “This, that.”
Looking at the topics in the collection from both sides of the coin, it spoke of replacing nostalgia, the sensational, and notoriety with the colloquial, non-apparent, and secretive.
Anderson’s way of doing this was by looking at what he described post-show as the nosy next-door neighbor. He referenced Last of the Summer Wine, a longstanding BBC sitcom set in Yorkshire, as an example of the small-town Britishness that was at the center of the collection.
Following on from the designer’s very British Uniqlo collaboration, this season offered a new perspective on the clothing of the nation. It warped traditional garments with Anderson’s typically experimental eye.
It might not have offered the showpiece viral moment that previous collections (such as the Play-Doh clothing from last season or its wild Wellipet footwear) often have, but its exploration into a concept was as well-considered as ever.
To once again quote from the show notes, FW24 presented: “Grotesque everydayness, in grotesque distortions and proportions.”
