While Charlotte Knowles and Alexandre Arsenault of KNWLS opted to present their previous collection as a lookbook, there’s nowhere their clothes look better than in motion—to be more precise, strutting down a runway to a thundering, high-octane soundtrack. It was cheering, then, to see them return to their natural habitat today with a bang. (The show itself came about in part thanks to XLNC, the latest offshoot of Lulu Kennedy’s Fashion East talent incubator that will now offer support to brands at the next stage of their career; funded by Ugg, the latter’s signature shearling was reinterpreted into so-bad-its-good heeled ankle boots that dovetailed seamlessly with KNWLS’s Y2K aesthetic.)
The collection was titled “Glimmer”—a glitzy promise on which it firmly delivered. Taking the now well-established KNWLS staples—printed mesh tops and pants held up with zig-zagging strings and straps, cropped jackets in treated leathers and denims, and bias-cut slip dresses punctuated with barbed, angular accessories—a welcome dose of eye-catching sparkle was added via Swarovski crystal-studded viscose and hair slicked back with brightly-hued shades of glitter. “Last season felt quite combative, so we wanted this to be more lighthearted,” said Arsenault after the show. Knowles concurred: “We were trying to react to the chaos in the world with something more hopeful and ethereal.”
The bread and butter pieces that keep the brand ticking over—and have earned it a loyal fanbase—were all present and correct, but the pair also gently nudged their offering in new directions. The KNWLS woman is still mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but this season, she showed her softer side too. Where prints in the past have taken their cues from leopards and vipers, here they came in dainty florals and patterns lifted from damask weaves, applied to diaphanous party dresses that fluttered down the runway while still retaining the brand’s signature club-ready edge.
KNWLS has spawned too many fast fashion imitators to count, but today’s show served as proof, if you needed it, that nobody does it as well as Knowles and Arsenault. “There’s a sense of comfort and nostalgia in the pieces, an ease and an effortlessness, but that tough KNWLS woman is still there,” said Knowles. “She’s still trying to survive the apocalypse, though,” Arsenault added, with a laugh. Surviving the apocalypse—just in florals this time.
