Ponte is so much more than a fashion brand. Although it focuses on clothes, these garments have more to do with a Meret Oppenheim-kind of surreal approach to applied arts than, say, haute couture (although some of the techniques conceptualized and materialized by the founder of the brand are just unthinkable). But I’m not sure Harry Pontefract, the London-based creative who views this project as “ongoing body of work” that dates back to his days at Central Saint Martins, would want to call it an art project. Ponte is… Ponte.

“Contradictory” seems to be a fitting term that classifies Pontefract’s practice. He might describe a look a “sort of a Chanel Catherine Deneuve suit” or “the most wrong cocktail dress in the world,” but at the same time he values the power of interpretation and believes that how people “read” his designs reveal much about themselves. The spring-summer 2025 collection can definitely be read in various ways, especially in terms of biography the object – in this case, the provenance of used materials in these striking, body-transforming coats, shawls and dresses. Look one was made with raw fleeces delivered from known sources. All the shearling came from a business down the street from the designer. The textile used for the pink shirt and pants is the lining of military sleeping bags. Vintage M65 army jackets were repurposed into not-so-basic suits. “Once you start to take them apart and they have the memories of whoever’s been wearing them in all the seams and everything, they’re such loaded garments. Even just doing something in that color, never mind out of old jackets, is going to be loaded”, Pontefract says. In the end, clothes are about codes and signals. I think not many contemporary designers have that in mind anymore. Another thing that stuns about the creative’s approach to fashion is his deep interest in the ephemeral. A dress painstakingly covered in 24 karat gold leaf and hand-felted shearlings (which were sewn to sheer tulle… mind-blowing!), will change and deteriorate in not such a long time, making one think of Ana Mendieta’s “Silueta” series. There’s something animalistic about this collection. Even brutal: like the sheepskin body covering the entire body in a intriguingly fetishistic way. “It’s human nature and it’s primal, that’s what I’d say about the collection“, summed up mastermind behind this absolutely transfixing brand.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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