In her search for “unchartered sex appeal”, Martine Rose had to look back to look forward. Skipping the catwalk for a grainy-style lookbook, this season the beloved designer wanted to combat monotonous style trends with the sort of togs that would “ruffle the feathers of convention”; a field she’s very well versed in.
She cast her mind back to the market stalls she’d frequent in her teens, particularly Camden and Kensington Markets, where the likes of BodyMap, Hyper Hyper and Leigh Bowery, a few years prior, had been amongst a sea of traders flogging bold designs to the city’s rich tapestry of boundary-pushers in the ‘80s.
Throughout the collection, Rose channeled dress-to-impress clubwear via swollen tailoring cut from nylon, leather tops with kinky buckles and bumbags and backpacks chopped up and fused to technical jackets; creating a bulbous, in-your-face silhouette. Army surplus stalls were echoed in green oversized bombers and washed-out combats, all while tye-dye jerseys and mismatched football shirts Frankenstein-ed together nodded to the second-hand sportswear you see sold at car-boot sales far and wide.
Always anthropological in her design approach, Rose was also thinking of the big-personalities that frequented such haunts, channelling “the eccentric lady heroic in market communities” through battered waistcoats and a reversible leather trench coats with tiger print teddy-bear fur. Gorgeously nostalgic and future-facing in the same breath, these are the sort of clothes that will bring a sense occasion to even the most mundane of days.
Photography by Tim Gutt.
