Elena Velez's BANDLAND (YR007)

As the models walked across the stage and up to the balconies, they crawled across the bar, twisting their bodies into eerie contortions, garbed in soot-stained corsets, lace-trimmed stockings, heavy waxed-canvas workwear, milkmaid necklines, bonnets, and prison-striped suits and caps, all underpinned by Zhilyova (the season’s lingerie partner). Among them, Anna Delvey (now a familiar face in Velez’s shows) once again blurred the line between performance, provocation, and the designer’s fascination with infamous outsiders. Though the venue was packed, the air felt barren and cold.
The soundtrack lurched and shifted abruptly, as though the train were halting at strange stations: each song a new landscape, each chapter a new ghostly presence. If last season were the sirens coming back to haunt us from a crashed ship, this season was the ghosts of a phantom train, trailing through the desolation of the American dream in a crowded yet hollow room.














