Juana Martin Couture Fall 2023

Lily Templeton
·2 min read
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If you want a helmet to match the Joan of Arc armor dress seen earlier in the week, Spanish designer Juana Martin had you covered.

Her opening silhouette, a lace bodysuit and black opera coat, was topped with a helmet with disembodied hands trying to remove it — or put it on, depending on how you wanted to see it.

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It was the first of a series of arty evocations of female freedom, complete with surreal touches such as line drawings of faces à la Jean Cocteau turned into headpieces, Picasso-like gilded openings that revealed the body or shoulder lines extending into flurries of ruffles that fluttered like wings with every step.

“This is the story of a time, with Cubism and the art moment rising as a revolution against nationalisms,” said Martin backstage before the show through a translator, a context she recognizes in the rising challenges in today’s world around reproductive rights and female freedoms. “If you are a woman, everything is more difficult, in business and in life.”

She certainly made a case for dressing to face what comes. Underneath the embellishments, Martin’s technical skill shone in the cut of a mean dress and well-turned-out tailoring, giving a feeling of soft armor with strong shoulder lines and a black-and-white palette with only a hint of gilt, in the shape of golden buttons or metallic square sequins.

All had real appeal, from minidresses with lantern sleeves and formfitting high-neck sheathes, to refined jackets and high-waisted trousers. Elsewhere, a ribbed pencil skirt revealed intricate pin-tucked pleating up close, which opened up as blowsy ruffles for a bolero top.

If Martin occasionally flew too close to the theatrical, her fall silhouettes were as pointed in their feminist messaging as they were sharply executed.

Launch Gallery: Juana Martín Couture Fall 2023

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