JW Anderson SS23 Asks You to Look Deeper

Backstage, Anderson spoke to the international press to declare that “Fashion is a very modern device. But it is not a modern act,” which encapsulates the designer’s latest work. Per the press release, “[It’s] a collection that asks to be looked at in perspective: from the peak of the selfie stick,” and capturing this is Anderson’s Rembrandt reference. Across trousers, knitwear and printed sneakers is the artist’s 1630 work of art titled Self-portrait in a Cap, Wide-eyed and Open-mouthed, a self-portrait by all means but perhaps a 400-year-old selfie, too.

This tongue-in-cheek attitude continued with further clashes on the runway: a skateboard snapped in two crisscrosses through a gray mohair sweater, handlebars from a BMX act as a harness for striped long-sleeve T-shirts, and a selection of tees are fitted with metal can ring tops, crinkled and bent open like a looking glass into the wearer.

Anderson asks “What is subjective, and what is objective anyway?” To our delight, he replies, “Only the viewer can tell,” which allows us to understand his SS23 clothes in the way we, the wearer, want to. For example, does a barcode peaking through distressed denim comment on the commercialism of fashion? Likewise, are we so accustomed to QR codes that one intarsia knitted on a sweater isn’t provocative anymore?

This is the clash Anderson is exploring, as stock photos of a child eating an apple on a relatively plain top, the additional asymmetrical neck hole on a blush pink sweater, and industrial leather gloves stuck to or hanging from tops and sweaters show how generic clothing — and banal things — can become something more. In Anderson’s own words, “Because of the clash, their objectivity becomes defiant and utterly subjective.”