#PFW: PAULA CANOVAS DEL VAS FW23

Do you remember? When meetings took place at midnight, undercovers, during sleepovers with friends, real and imagined; when dreaming was a daily duty, and when language was something to be invented, not learned.

Designer Paula Canovas del Vas is known for, among other things: living garments, articulate absurdity and resurrecting deadstock fabric. For autumn winter 2023, she has created a collection that jaunts the protagonist from adulthood to youth, back again, and then somewhere further.

The shapes, vivacious yet vulnerable, adolescent yet eloquent––read like specimens found in a museum of natural mystery, they grow and evolve, like a kind acid trip, right before the eye. In an instant, glittered knee-high Diablo boots make a faun of the protagonist, frosted sleeves sprout like stamens, and knits are busy ravelling themselves back together.

Better than an experiment with medication, colors arrive like the weather pattern of a distant planet, piece after piece vibrantly unfurls––a chain reaction to responsibility, to adulthood––afterglow blue, lava orange, the yellow of a banana flavored candy. Now hieroglyphs, a secret, seductive dialect; now specimens seen through a microscope, microbial, biotic; Canovas del Vas’ latest collection will prove as intriguing to an adult, as to the child within.

paulacanovasdelvas.com