The Thinkers: Intellectual and Intelligent Couturiers, Designers and Creators

Some designers set about offering fashion and clothes through cerebral investigation – thinking! They are outside fashion in a weird way since they’re more interested in the exploration of design, from fabric and colour, through shape and details placement, than applying a narrative.

I am fascinated by how certain collections make you think, rather than evoking any kind of emotional response. Azzedine Alaia was sexy, Thierry Mugler took us into the space age, and John Galliano explored a world of fantasy and imagination, but other designers present their collection as an investigation of clothes, and what to wear.

These people tell a story, but it is secondary to the intellectual and intelligent approach to the conundrum of creating pieces to form a collection. Also, in general by their approach to fashion and style they are not the first people to make glossy magazine covers or Hollywood premiers. The clothes are often about a specific element be it tailoring at Lemaire or colour and pattern at Dries van Noten. It’s a signature that threads the name and brand together across the seasons. For some observers it is dull or unexciting, or its very consistency is annoying, yet the master’s at thoughtful collections have stability, loyal clients, and an equilibrium not to be ignored.

Words by Tony Glenville

At couture this is very clearly the way Balenciaga thought and indeed in wildly unusual ways Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons and or Martin Margiela. Each season develops in a continuous arc, such as Rei Kawakubo interest in big volumes, achieved in countless ways, or her chopping up and reassembling pieces. They are signatures, or distinguishing features across the seasons. The striped Breton sweater of Jean-Paul Gaultier, or the white Greek draped dress of Madame Gres become more than just pieces.

It is easy to spot intellectual fashion since the name and the creative thrust of the pieces can be challenging to wear, can be in the direct opposition to current trends, and is often aimed at a client who collects both their chosen fashion designers’ pieces as well as art, from Matisse to Bill Viola, from sculptural explosions to unusual pottery.

I guess another element is that the clothes are often not easy to wear and the client may not be conventionally pretty, but what was always referred to as “striking” or in French “Jolie Laide.”

I am going to be writing about three other fashion groups for Cellotape, but the challenge for me with this first group is not so much trying to analyse the designers individually as work out what links them. I will settle for individual vision as perhaps the defining feature of the thoughtful designer. Their work is often divisive since it is strong and bold, and the designer often really looks inwards, or has a direct vision that never wavers.

In the first part of the thinkers, I will open with the couturiers and designers focussing on upcycling, recycling, repurposing, and deadstock. There is Aelis whose quietly confident position across the seasons during the official haute couture calendar is now established and who has an extremely specific romanticism. I confess to loving her work, the gentleness of its exposition and the nostalgic drift of each season’s show. I’ve said before that Chopin and Chekhov seem to me to be her territory, as her figures in a landscape walk slowly past, sometimes simply to the sound of a cellist, the drape, the invisible handling of the construction and the weightless quality of her pieces is magical. Even in darker and heavier fabrics, or the lightest of tailoring her pieces show how each piece and its construction have been the focus of her attention during its creation. In a totally different and distinct way Ronald van der Kemp also offers each look and each piece as the result of his focus and invention. The cutting and piecing together of the look created through fabric layering, plus the texture and weight of the fabric. The utilisation of tiny pieces or the drape or tailoring of others more generous lengths of tissue. His collections are called “wardrobes” for the simple and obvious reason that from street style pants and tops to gala gowns to ascend gilded staircases, it’s all there. Kevin Germanier brings glitter and wit to reusing things, plus a glamour. He takes various paths from incredible beadwork on vintage pieces to the hautest of couture drape to explosions of vibrating metallics. It’s his vision and it’s totally unique and has really turned the observers of his work into thinkers, how is it done and what is it made of including crayons/pencils. Julie de Libran makes real clothes for real lives out of limited edition fabrics from deadstock, end of lines, or whatever. Her approach is not about headlines, front page supermodels or even celebrities, it’s a simple thought; great clothes.

Of course, American designers have always looked at fashion in more realistic terms, not the Hollywood side but the heritage of Bonnie Cashin and Claire McCardell. Norman Norell, Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene and so many others focus on the pieces and the actual idea of thinking through the collection and how it balances. Donna Karan with her seven easy pieces, or the minimalism of Calvin Klein, the brilliance of Ralph Lauren who took British heritage, Hollywood glamour, American College style and the French and Italian views on understated elegance, threw in in the fashion mixer and came up with Ralph Lauren style which is truly original yet instantly recognisable from plaid shirt to bias cut diva gown, from jeans to flying jacket. It’s fascinating how the years Diana Vreeland spent looking for both clothes to shoot in amazing ways, but also under the styling and the story, real clothes remain a firm foundation of American fashion, thoughtful ideas about how women and men of the day can get dressed. Diana Vreeland often spoke of this feeling; her exact wording is most famously remembered as promoting clothes with “breezes running through their seams” or “breezes in their seams”.

“The iconic fashion editor hated clothing that “fussed and trussed” or felt overly stiff and restrictive. Instead, she championed fluid lines, freedom of movement, and garments that felt alive, lightweight, and filled with air. To her, a great piece of design wasn’t just structurally perfect—it had to have a certain effortless breathability, as if a natural breeze could blow right through the seams.”

Michael Kors is the direct descendant of this line of design. He thinks about modern life, the clients who buy his clothes, elegance with a throw away American nonchalance. His star is still high because no designer outside New York thinks and works as he does. Like Ralph Lauren they have thought about their clients and every detail that works for them, from Atlanta to San Francisco to The Hamptons.

It’s interesting to note how when Chanel returned with her neat suits and little black dresses, whilst Christian Dior was still working through the seasons following the New Look, it was American store buyers and women who responded so strongly to the ease of the clothes.

Today we see Carolina Herrera, although she is of course Venezuelan, and Diane von Furstenberg who is Belgian fitted perfectly into how the American view of fashion, and it is exactly where they belong because of their thoughtful approach to clothes. As did the late great Oscar de la Renta who was from the Dominican Republic. During his season designing Pierre Balmain all the ladies crossed the Atlantic to see his collections and bought a great deal.

2026 sees Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe hold up this rigorous and thoughtful approach to creating a collection. Their attitude to the house has elevated its clothes into a spectrum from resort to cocktail, from easy, street elegance, to ultra smart cocktail.

It also prompts the observation that often with the thinkers, it’s a simple case of delivering what’s on the runway. Many years ago I asked a senior buyer why they’d stopped stocking a very much talked about designer, whose work was often featured in the pages of the top glossy magazines. I was told that much of the collection shown on the runway was never made. Later I learnt that during Tom Ford’s time at Gucci the most luxurious pieces were either limited edition or made to order, and in fact there was a “commercial” collection which the press was not allowed to view. Thoughtful and thinking designers generally don’t go down this route, except I’m sure for a few finale pieces for the show.

Away from the reusing of stuff, and the American view of creating a collection, there are many thoughtful designers who explore creating a collection that does not fit into the general trends already around, or directions being discussed. These are designers whose work is about the collection and its “construction” from the physical making to the balance of pieces, from the clients to the kind of lives these customers live. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt creates clothes that point to her thinking about shape and scale, thinking about colour from cool to brilliant. Burc Akyol, Anrealarge designer (Alphonse) Maitrepierre, Vaquera, Uma Wang, Rick Owens, Undercover, Ottolinger, all look at fashion through a thoughtful lens. Officine Générale provides great clothes season after season, dress many many people yet for many they are below the fashion radar, or simply not “exciting” whatever that might mean. Kunihiko Morinaga at Anrealage brings modern Japanese sensibility to fashion through extraordinary technical innovations, but also wonderful clothes, his shows are a high point of pret a porter in Paris for making the audience think. Thus, showing that thinking is ultimately a two way process in fashion, we hope.

Obviously, not only Comme des Garçons but also Junya Watanabe and Noir by Kei Ninomiya are intellectual collections steeped in Japanese traditions of thinking, analysis and how one approach is the problem of fashion and clothes. Duran Lantink seems to be exploring not so much the archive of Jean-Paul Gaultier as an exploration of shapes from literally skin through to explosive volume. His work is strongly decisive because his approach is through a thought process many of us aren’t tuned into. It is his brain sending the signals to create these pieces, not a story, a mood board or beautiful clothes, its statements on how clothes can be, and is remarkably different to simply being fashion. Christopher Esber has his own view of fashion as does Irakli Ridadze at Situationist and Institution by Galib Gassanoff all also point to another element in 2026 and going forward; internationalism and culture. The thinkers come from many countries and have many cultural differences from food and education to manners and costume traditions. It is fascinating to watch the fashion awards such as the LVMH or Andam entrants and their diversity in terms of home life. Our creativity is so often inspired in odd ways by our grandparents, and their charming links to another generation, it’s often through early discoveries unnoticed by adults that a piece of cloth over a table, the colour of an old doorway or even a traditionally fabricated stuffed toy. It’s these cultural and personally special inspirations that send echoes down the years, and the thinkers carry this with them both consciously and unknowingly. So, our couturiers I mentioned earlier are Swiss, French, Dutch, and Italian showing this element perfectly.

I will finish by mentioning the obvious, which is that we will all make our own list of designers who we believe are thinkers rather than story tellers, or purists, so over to you to start making your own lists.