There were monochromatic white looks aplenty in the spring 2024 collections, underscoring messages of lightness and wearability, while still ushering in positive vibes for the season ahead.
Gabriela Hearst went deep into the non-color for her swan song at Chloé, which WWD’s West Coast executive editor Booth Moore hailed as the designer’s best in her three-year tenure at the French house.
Paraded on the banks of the river Seine, the show concluded with a samba party, with Hearst kicking up her heels and her models joining in, wearing her soft linen tailoring, sculpted leather “calla lily” dresses and gowns with floral leather and ceramic cutouts in shades ranging from ivory to bone.
Other designers making their debuts, including Sabato De Sarno at Gucci and Louise Trotter at Carven, chose white to symbolically wipe the slate clean at their respective brands.
Meanwhile, those who have a well-established history of using bold colors, like Blumarine’s Nicola Brognano, did so to keep up with the changing mood in fashion as consumers shift toward timeless investment pieces. As WWD Milan correspondent Martino Carrera stated in his review of Brognano’s show, “the sweep of Y2K nostalgia is beginning to show some signs of fatigue.”
At Carolina Herrera, Wes Gordon cut way back on florals and frou frou, drawing his inspiration from Herrera’s personal uniform of a crisp white shirt and simple skirt. Disciplined? Sure, but just don’t call the look minimal, which “is often boring and soulless,” he told Moore backstage.
Gordon’s puff-sleeve version still carried the brand’s signature romance, and sitting front row without a hair out of place, Herrera herself might’ve been eyeing it to add into her rotation.
Buyers were certainly bullish on white. Linda Fargo, women’s fashion director for Bergdorf Goodman, was keen on the non-color, especially for suiting. Highlighting its continued prominence on the Paris runways, she told WWD that new iterations in “all-white felt important and a fresh reason to buy.”
But among the designers, the LWD, or little white dress, was far more popular. Angelic dresses walk the runways at Prada, Stella McCartney, Loewe, Jil Sander and Akris.
