On January 14 in Milan, for men’s fall 2024, JW Anderson’s namesake designer took heed to The Shining’s “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” and delivered an invigorating collection. For the collection, Jonathan Anderson collaborated with the 91-year-old artist Cristiane Kubrick, widow and muse to the late film auteur.

Backstage looks from Fall 2024. Courtesy of JW Anderson.

Kubrick’s paintings featured in many of her husband’s films, such as Eyes Wide Shut, adding depth, pathos, and underlying narrative from the mise en scène. For the JW Anderson project, her vivid oil works were translated into prints on everything from bags to blousy tops to long-sleeve T-shirt dresses—yes, the work mostly featured on gender fluid items, a trope Anderson pioneered long before it was mainstream. The standouts were the knitwear, one featuring a quizzical calico cat and another the lavender interior of an automobile.

Backstage at Fall 2024. Courtesy of JW Anderson.

“There is something about the works that are so quintessential but at the same time strange,” Anderson said of the paintings in a short film, Who is the Painter?, made about the collaboration by Stanley and Cristiane’s grandson, Jack Elliot Hobbs. “When I look at the work I feel that there is something deeply personal. To be at that age and to be so free. There is no other way. She has to do it. It’s a compulsion. I look up to that. When I’m working on clothing I have to do it. It’s the one fundamental relationship in my life that is a constant.”

Fall 2024 runway looks. Courtesy of JW Anderson.

He added, “One of the most difficult things to do is to tell us something we don’t know about ourselves.”

Always ahead of the pack, the JW Anderson collection is often a conglomeration of codes and curveballs. The Kubrick paintings served as this outing’s detour. A tweaked house motif was the signature seminal frilly shorts. They returned with a jaunty vengeance—they debuted about a decade ago, leather lederhosen-adjacent pom-poms. Now they’re in satin.

Fall 2024 runway looks. Courtesy of JW Anderson.

Anderson balanced out the outré elements with exaggerated and oversized swaths of more traditional masculinity, sweeping overcoats and some killer trouser offerings, some featuring a single giant cargo pocket. To Anderson, proportion and scale (and every other norm) are there to be skewed.

Backstage looks from Fall 2024. Courtesy of JW Anderson.

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