JORDANLUCA is back in full force. Following the brand’s erotic and dynamic Spring/Summer 2023 collection, co-founders Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto once again made their mark on the Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2023 calendar.
Visitors were welcomed to an almost pitch-black warehouse in Milan earlier today, whose exterior is authentically decorated with graffiti. Inside, black concrete floors and markets are all you find before the strobe lights announce the start of the show.
Immediately afterwards, JORDANLUCA unconsciously said: “We have arrived.” His usual decoded formal wear was strong, but not as strong as the shoulders on the jackets. Such exaggeration is a constant theme of the brand, with blazers featuring oversized shoulders, elongated lapels and an elongated body. On the contrary, the satin brown bomber jacket was, of course, narrow at the waist, but it was given a JORDANLUCA touch with bulbous shoulder pads. Plaid coats echoed the formalities that had come before, while white faux-fur jackets — decadently voluminous — began to introduce another side of the brand: sex.
“Sex” is a buzzword during the Fall/Winter 2023 season. Coming just moments before JORDANLUCA, FENDI delivered sheer knits. Gucci’s show yesterday combined skirts in its menswear offering, and Martine Rose went all out on the subversions.
At JORDANLUCA we also found skirts — some in traditional fabrics such as Houndstooth, others in collaboration with sportswear brand Lonsdale. This collaboration comments on sex itself, as the brand is highly fetishized in British subcultures and the Queer community, being a beacon of the lad mentality, reappropriated from its Y2K stereotype.
The Lonsdale collaboration leaned deeply into Queer culture, with triple exposed underwear, off-the-shoulder tracksuits, boxing boots, and even a puffer coat that could have been bootleg if it weren’t for the nearly hidden JORDANLUCA monogram.
The fun was fueled by cowboy boots — some as you’d expect, others with metal heel caps and the crowd favorite, cowboy boots. Paired with everything from flared western-embroidered jeans to foot-hugging pink camo trousers and even an oversized sage green velvet suit, the boots acted as the perfect accent to FW23’s mix of references.
All in all, JORDANLUCA did not miss. To learn more about the collection, Hypebeast spoke with co-founder Jordan Bowen backstage after the show.
Hypebeast: At the show, JORDANLUCA really seemed to find his identity. Would you agree?
Jordan Bowen: Yes. We’ve basically worked on three collections: the Lonsdale capsule, menswear that we try to improve every season and continue to push, and womenswear that we’ve tried to absorb into menswear. We try to treat the collection as one thing, to think of the JORDANLUCA universe as one thing. We think of it as one wardrobe that anyone can access; it doesn’t really matter gender or male and female, it doesn’t work that way anymore.
It was really interesting to work in a way that feels bigger. The more we expanded, the more unique we were for where we were going.
The Lonsdale collaboration is also perfect for your brand. It really explains the sex drive of the brand.
Of course! You know, it’s really interesting in terms of presentation. There is a similarity there, a sort of menswear exhibition in the style of Lonsdale. There are also interesting similarities in masculinity and how subversive both ideas are. There is a community. There is hypermasculinity.
As much as Lonsdale wants to get away from [stereotypes], I guess we also have to accept it for what it is. Make it sexy. We know it’s fetishized and it’s fun. Although we are at different ends of the fashion spectrum, with such a man there is a real vision. And adding that to the womenswear collection was really fun.
Check out the JORDANLUCA FW23 collection in the gallery above and stay tuned to Hypebeast for more Milan Fashion Week FW23 coverage in the coming days.
In case you missed it, check out Dsquared2’s equally wacky show.