June 27, 2022 |
If this Paris Men’s Fashion Week was stark of anything, it was the art of seduction. Luckily, Marine Serre came running to the rescue on Saturday with a collection that doubled as a spandex love letter to the notion of community.
Set in a sports field on the southern edge of Paris’s metro system where a 400 metre circuit served as the catwalk, the spectacle was open to the public with thousands of out-of-industry attendees managing to score a ticket as though it were an Olympic jamboree.
The range showcased sportswear at its finest and most fashionable, with casual sexiness ingrained in its DNA. An amalgamation of both professional and rookie athletes, family friends and enigmatic celebrities like Jorja Smith and Lourdes Leon made up the models who wore ski-goggle-like sunglasses atop their heads and half-moon shoulder baguettes upon their wrists. With footballs similarly tucked under arms and tennis rackets in hand, athletes appeared clad in upcycled jewellery, patched denim and piped towel dresses in effervescent hues inclusive of fuschia, sage, emerald and sky blue. Soon the show became a family affair, with a mother and a daughter walking hand-in-hand, followed by a father and his young children who, all in shaved pink terry twin sets, were an idyllic menage.
Elsewhere, donning sun hats and yoga mats or bathed in iridescent gold body paint – like the gimmicky trophies awarded at an amateur football tournament – the edit was doubtlessly sensual. Like a second skin, Serre’s idiosyncratic moon print was imbued upon catsuits, bodysuits and fitted turtlenecks layered amongst obsidian and gold baroque prints.
Serre also seemed to have hopped on the Y2K train this summer, but in a way that was anything but kitsch. Sporting mens mini skirts wrapped around straight-leg trousers, recycled cut out swimwear and intricate knit and crochet frocks, it was sexually ambiguous. Spliced together with floral silks, patchwork prints and 1980s skin-tight sporty silhouettes, Marine Serre’s latest offering was beautifully optimistic.
Photography courtesy of Marine Serre.
