June 13, 2023 |
Styles born on strobe-lit dancefloors have long fascinated Martine Rose. She grew up watching her older cousins get ready for raves, and her namesake collections have continued to mine the uniforms of Acid Housers, punks, and New Romantics for inspiration. She’s also indebted to the local communities that have flourished in her native London, previously staging shows in a Kentish Town cul-de-sac, Seven Sisters Market and a shuttered gay sauna in Vauxhall.
Returning to the Big Smoke after a guest spot at men’s trade show Pitti Uomo in January – where she showed a collection that took traditional Italian tailoring down a warped and wonky route – this season Rose invited the fashion pack to North London’s St Joseph’s Parish Centre, not far from her studio in Crouch Hill. She’d been thinking a lot about community hubs and working men’s clubs, like this very one, which through the Seventies and Eighties would turn into makeshift dancefloors for its community, long before clubs and pubs would litter the capital in later decades.
“Young people co-opted community spaces and put on nights,” said the designer post-show. “Every wave of immigration that has subsequently came through the UK has had a community centre that serviced them.”
As if frozen in time, with a wood-panelled bar, red velvet curtains, and larger-stained carpets, guests sweatily huddled around pub tables, pints in hand, as Rose’s troupe sauntered in an explosive slew of the brand’s signatures. Slouched trackies walked alongside punk-buckle jeans and swollen leather jackets that hunched forward; a displacement in volume borrowed from the driving stance of a motorcyclist. Lady-like florals now dressed up skimpy men’s tops and sleazy, glossy shirts came elongated like dresses.
“I love playing with gender lines,” says Rose, “I find men in women’s clothes sexy, I find women in men’s clothes very sexy.” She continued to pile on the kink factor of previous outings through greasy-looking shiny suits that sagged at the shoulders, inside-out skirts, men’s satin girdles, and jeans gaffer-taped at the knee. A total collision of Rose’s go-to characters, one look saw hi-viz work trousers coupled with a camisole, as if the Martine Rose man headed straight from a hard day’s graft to a night of mischief at queer club night Adonis.
Rose anchored the collection with her subversive takes on everyday footwear, including winkle-pickers, new iterations of her Nike Shox MR4 trainer mule, and her debut, puffed-up kicks as Clarks’ first guest creative director. “They explained their top priority is comfort. So I thought, let’s make it ridiculously comfortable,” said Rose, who exaggerated the 200-year-old brand’s classic brogue and loafer styles.
Beyond the clothes, the designer hopes the show has a lasting effect: “when we arrived at the venue this morning, the owners said, ‘Maybe this will actually stop us from closing,’” she explained. “Community centres are vital, they’re a lifeline to people.”
Photography courtesy of Martine Rose.
