Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is on everybody’s lips in Paris. Although considered a newcomer by the industry, she in fact was a ready-to-wear designer at Demna’s Balenciaga for a couple of seasons. Spring-summer 2024 collection comes in perfect continuity with her previous outing, deliberately designed to complement the ideas that are at core of the brand. The raw, intense, dazzling light of the summer sun at its zenith is used in a quasi-extreme vision that aims to question seasonality and obsolescence through a counterpoint and paradox. In the same spirit, Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s garments multiply their uses, with systems of ties, fastenings and buttonholes. They can be worn as desired, far away or close to the body, and we appropriate them to create our own personal wardrobe, our own collection. Objects stripped of their initial function are adorned with dress codes, and hybridization is a given: Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s signature. “Create the surprise“, she says. “Thus, the portable beach hut becomes, almost literally, a dress, in the same referential fabric – a conceptual garment“, the designer enigmatically says. The collection is enriched by some Margiela-isms (like at Vaquera; it seems that this Paris Fashion Week will be big on references to the Belgian designer): a trompe-l’oeil stiletto heel, pool and sand prints, and over-sized, raw denim.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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