If you read me, then you know I’m a sucker for Lemaire! What Christopher Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran create every six months is just so well-balanced, and it perfectly fits my personal style. For spring-summer 2022, the label has no shock value intentions, instead, it delivers functional, timeless and beautifully tailored garments that are the perfect building blocks of a summer wardrobe. The designers offer a post-pandemic line-up of essentials – from classic, crisp white shirts and chic jackets made in Japanese denim to flared skirts in light-weight duvet and billow-y day-dresses in the most charming earth tones. You just hope those clothes will go out to the office, and not end up behind the computer monitor. The Lemaire woman and man never try too hard. The clothes are neat, but never uptight. The silhouettes are over-sized, but not slouchy. The colour palette is all about sun-burnt neutals, except for some items that come in idyllic watercolour prints. And as for the accessories, you just can’t miss the over-sized necklaces and vests made from wooden beads (like the once you see on the seats of your grandpa’s car), just as the signature “Croissant” bags in new colour-ways. Some things are great the way they are, and I always find Lemaire’s calm approach to fashion as a sort of relaxing comfort zone.
This season at Y/Project, the biggest news is the collaboration with Fila. Glenn Martens‘ worked around the sporstwear items made in co-operation with the Italian giant, staying true to himself – there just wouldn’t be a Y/Project line-up without his distorted twists and trompe l’oeil doublings that build the brand’s aesthetics. Some of the latest developments? Take the braided knits that rose from the waist to tangle at the neckline in order to allow the wearer to rearrange the garment in various permutations according to inclination. As Martens said: “You have to choose where exactly to put your head within it: we always try to push people to experiment with the garments and really embrace them and have fun with them.” Double mini-dresses could be worn with the organza top layer pulled down for a more classic look, or pulled up by drawstring for a broken effect. Bucket bags came structured, as did many of the garments, with wire inserts that invited the carrier to reshape their architecture as they pleased. The ‘Melissa’ shoes, in rubber, were the chicest vegan beach-ready footwear you will ever see. A red Fila tracksuit cut in with white branding was rearrangeable via popper to allow you to dictate how much logo you were flashing. Look 33’s skirt was in fact a pant, with a hole to the top left of the garment that the wearer had ejected her leg from. A men’s short-sleeved shirt came with a series of panels whose arrangement demanded that you decide whether you preferred pattern or plain, while some awesome gowns in jersey and velvet could be worn in multiple ways. Y/Project clothes are like a box of hard puzzles – they are demanding, sophisticated, but once you fall in love with them, there’s satisfaction.
It’s an important time for the duo behind Jil Sander. Two-and-a-half weeks ago, Lucie Meier gave birth to a daughter. “It’s three of us now,” said her husband and co-creative director Luke Meier. Lucie hadn’t tried to hide her pregnancy, but since everyone outside her studio had only seen her neck-up on a Zoom call for the last nine months, no one realized. “I worked until a week before, but it’s good to be two,” she said. “Luke could take over.” They had begun working on their men’s collection some three months into the pregnancy, so, as Luke pointed out, “I don’t know if it’s conscious and present in the work yet.” The designers were, however, more reflective about the fashion world than normal. On a video call from Milan, Luke lamented fashion’s commercialization of parts of the sports – and streetwear that shaped him (he spent eight years at Supreme), and fondly remembered the eclecticism and individuality of New York street style in the early 1990s. “You’d see people on the street who’d be able to mix things like tailoring with an interesting piece of jewelry and something more functional like a parka. We were thinking about Jean-Michel Basquiat or Glenn O’Brien, these seminal New York characters,” he said. “Now, things are a bit uniform: there’s ‘this kind of person’ and ‘that kind of person.’ It’s nice to see people going for something that’s not considered the coolest thing of the moment.” While their collection was a reaction to uniformity, uniforms were undeniably present. Between utility suits, flight suits, strictly-belted tailored suits, and slender leather shirts with matching leather ties, there was an air of tonal, monumental dressing, which did go hand-in-hand with the industrial influences of the post-modern New Yorker artist wardrobe, but also evoked more symbolic uniforms of the post-war era. That wasn’t on the mood board, but the designers explained that the look they had in mind was about interrupting familiar or generic lines with pieces that express a certain individuality. That’s why colorful silken and fluffy foulards were tied around necks, why suits were bejeweled with jingly grape brooches, or why trousers were wildly magnified. It’s why a pink granny cardigan suddenly popped up, then a sexy cheetah print gilet, then a jumper motif that seemed to have zoomed in on a fragment of a multi-colored argyle pattern. Those graphic, color-block elements were nods to Donald Judd, whose SoHo building Luke would pass every day, admiring its Dan Flavin installation, when he lived in New York. After being stuck in the same places for so long, with the selfies of social media as our only real window to people-watching, this re-emergent period could trigger the individuality the Jil Sander designers are hoping to experience in the street once again. “I miss those characters and that world,” Luke said. “I don’t if it’s because we’ve been stuck inside so much, but I just want to see some interesting people.”
Design & Culture by Ed 