September 24, 2018 |
What are you to do if the fabric at the core of your brand, which was once a symbol of technology and progress, is now deemed a polluting pariah? That’s the dilemma faced by the Courréges Artistic Director Yolanda Zobel Plastic – namely wipe clean vinyl – is synonymous with Courrèges who used it for space-age mini dresses in the 1960’s.
Zobel’s reaction to the dilemma is inspiring. She’s created a countdown to zero plastic, using up the company’s stockpile of vinyl on numbered garments while at the same time remaking the brand for now. That’s what this show was all about. Held in the Courrèges boutique, which has been gutted in preparation for the new dawn, the models cut a swathe through the crowd who all stood to watch.
The clothes riffed on Courrèges’s sixties outerwear but also referenced nineties clubland with mesh hipster flares and bra tops as well as and naughties Manga (pink wings and metal flower petal face jewellery anyone?) and today’s logomania (nude tights printed with the Courrèges emblem. The finished look was pitched somewhere between retro-now and Burning Man. It had an energy – and at this stage in the brands reinvention that can only be a good thing.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans.
