#walter van beirendonck
The stars must be aligned in some powerful way. But more than that… ✶
THE APPRENTICE ✧ masquerade attire
Walter Van Beirendonck ✦ Spring 2015 Menswear
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Photography: Juergen Teller
Make-up: Inge Grognard
Prosthetic Make-up: Geoff Portass
Styling: Walter Van Beirendonck & Dirk Van Saene
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Paris Fashion Week - Menswear
I’m completely exhausted after having covered all the three major menswear fashion weeks and if I think Couture Fashion Week has just started and will be over in just some days - this means I’m going to cover it very soon - I think I’m going to die - and we haven’t got to RTW Fashion Weeks yet! But after all, I love fashion, and that’s why this is sweet labour for me - since I started studying fashion for my MA my life is completely soaked in it, today I was at a conference with three of the most important Italian fashion historians - I love my life!
But apart from my personal life, here we go with the best runways from Paris, day by day!
Day 1
Yes, it was a very exciting fashion week after all, and I was surprised by a city which I thought was fashion only for the marvelous past it had in the business. 22/4_Hommes (photo 1) was a great shot to start with. I enjoyed this collection the more I went ahead with the looks. Still could do without the fur, but in general it was classy in a new way, even if giving a sort of reference to the past. Loved the elongated silhouettes and the edgy cut of jackets and coats.
Lemaire then delivered a collection for hipsters growing up, while Walter van Beirendonck was brave for opening a collection in Paris after the recent happenings at Charlie Hebdo with a top on which the sentence ‘Stop terrorising our world’ was written. It was a strong message, if not for the content in itself - it’s a pretty simplistic and obvious statement - at least it reminded everyone fashion can be used as a very big means of communication. Apart from that, I saw a lot of reference to art in this very eccentric collection, especially Picasso and Braque: colourful pullovers with faces, a lot of patchwork, even three-dimensional. And there was eroticism also: 'Explicit’ was written on some of the looks, and explicit enough was the mini sex toy hanging from the chain of the accessory decorating some of the pieces.
It would be a lie if I said I didn’t like Valentino collection. Yet, it was nothing like the last collections, and this time Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli went for something very very understated that, after all, really risked of being not interesting enough. The only very positive thing I can point is the fact they finally chose to use some more popping colours than usual - even if, again, everything was really subtle. But this is Valentino, of course.
We’ve understood reminiscence is going to be a big inspiration among designers for the next few seasons. Raf Simons (photo 2) took the theme and made it his own in a shocking way. The coats were covered in drawings and writing tags, from the most infant-like to the ones more appealing to adolescence and the rebelliousness that comes with it. The clothes talked about time: raw hems, floor-length proportions mimicking something like 'too big for your age’, and the last, fantastic looks, 'ruined’ by holes but at the same time getting their charm exactly from those flaws, because they talk about time, and time and memories are some of the most precious goods we have in life.
Balenciaga (photo 3), under the direction of Alexander Wang, instead, had no flaw which could be apparently found in its looks. Not even a seaming could be seen. It’s such perfection that you can’t even imagine it can exist. But it can, and after all Balenciaga has always been about this: construction and structure before anything else. Nothing more, nothing less. Just the piece of clothing and the person wearing it.
Day 2
3.1 Philipp Lim put together formalwear with dynamic materials, shapes and details, while when I saw Kolor collection I thought, at the beginning, 'Ooops, there’s someone here copying Missoni’; but then I rethought my judgement and kinda enjoyed the overall collection, with its subtle playfulness. Loved the trouser details, like pockets and closures, applied to coats.
You can’t help talking about a collection everyone talked about just because models were actually walking down the runway with their 'little friends’ hanging freely in front of the audience. Yes, I’m talking about Rick Owens. Apart from this little detail, been overlooked by the designer who defined it as 'juvenile transgression’, I really think there was something wrong in this collection. Believe me, I’m all for research on new ways to do fashion, but apart from very few looks, it was just formless rags hardly covering the body. And the dicks bouncing freely down the runway just distracted you from the most important thing: clothes.
At least there was Louis Vuitton (photo 4) to comfort us all. Angels were singing in my head as soon as I saw the first look and immediately fell in love with this collection. It was great in its simplicity. The clothes in themselves were just plain, ordinary clothes, but everything was superbly toned up with the quality of material, the perfect cut - have you ever seen such perfection in cut, shape and proportion? GOD, I’m crazy about it! - and the print, which was sublime, being figurative as well as optical, looking like a giant tattoo sometimes, and a maxi decoration in some other instances. Classic monogram bags were the right complement for such an amazing view.
Dries Van Noten offered a great variety of clothes of which I particularly liked the quilted trousers. Alexander Wang (photo 5) hit the jackpot with his own collection again after Balenciaga. It’s now obvious, he elevated activewear to its first and foremost inspiration and style and we’re always happy to see what such a motive can bring to fashion. This time it looked more summery than anything you can possibly wear for winter, and the Hawaiian-like prints make this impression stronger. Loved it anyway. It’s like waiting for the summer to come ASAP.
Viktor & Rolf presented a collection which was less conceptual than usual, still loved the digitised print and the colour palette for the slick skinny-fit suits.
Day 3
Maison Margiela went very 70s with a wearability we don’t expect from the maison - is it a sign of the changes happening with John Galliano’s return? Ann Demeulemeester instead confused me a little bit with the huge amount of pieces they sent down the runway, but overall there were some very interesting details, like the rows of dozens of buttons going over tops, trousers and coats, as well as the heavy layering of some pieces.
Juun.J chose XL proportions with military vibe and formalwear as the ingredients of this new collection. Kris Van Assche instead manipulated camouflage and made it urban and appealing.
Comme des Garçons (photo 6) is always one of those collections you expect with excitement because you know it’s going to explosive. This time it seemed like the main focus of the designer was the research on male suit. There were reinvented proportions, buttons moved from one place to another, oversize shorts instead of trousers, a real revolution of the most conservative piece in the male wardrobe. The dreamy part - never missing in CDG collection- ? Total tattoo look.
Givenchy (photo 7) was another one you would probably like to see. Despite the usual references to gender crossing in fashion these days, there was something very masculine about this collection, and something very erotic too. I don’t know it it was for the colout combination - guess black and these tones of red and orange together turn me on. I absolutely adored the print looking like a Persian rug.
J. W. Anderson knows what he’s doing and he does it in such an amazing way that you start wondering if Loewe (photo 8) has ever been so amazingly fascinating. This time it seemed every garment was infused with a retro 60s atmosphere which really made it look like an authentic vintage piece of clothing. Yet, it has the brightness - in colour, in cut, in material - of today.
Day 4
If it wasn’t obvious, the 'UFO’ written on some of Kenzo pieces (photo 9) swept away all the doubts you could have about the inspiration of this collection. Yet, the biggest achievement for the designers of the maison was to talk about something so otherworldly as aliens in such a down-to-earth way. Irony in the presumably 'alien’ symbols - but there were actually human symbols mixed with them as well - covering total looks or combined to form messages added that smile which sealed the entire collection. Genius and futuristic the leather bundles as bags. Études Studio (photo 10) was not one of the most innovative collections, but it was eye-catching for sure, and I loved the reference to architecture visible in the geometry of the patterns and in the structure of many of the looks.
Dior Homme went for businessmen with a touch of colour this time, Wooyoungmin chose soft comfy silhouettes and, to close the day, Miharayasuhiro displayed decadence in an opulent way, with denim torn apart and enriched by brocade-like prints.
Day 5
InUndercover’s collection(photo 11) everything was thought to the last detail: the velvet of the coat was perfect to accentuate the beautiful bright shade of blue; many pieces had a back as important as the front in terms of decoration; some outerwear even had a pocket for iPhone6. It was young, fresh and perfect for the metropolitan boy of today.
No Editions delivered a collection of basic classic silhouettes with soft cozy fur - I only hope that was faux fur. Paul Smith was somewhat more polished than usual, it seems he wants to focus on the suit and on geometrical patterns. From Umit Benan I appreciated the inspiration coming from sea - fishermen were everywhere. Still wished he went a little bit further with this inspiration, making it more modern - some looks really looked like they were actual fishermen’s clothes. Loved the warm knit in multicoloured patterns.
Thom Browne (photo 12) was the perfect ending to Paris Fashion Week - even if he wasn’t the very last designer to show. It was subtler than usual, but after all, it was total black. And it’s so genius to present a total black collection, even more if the obvious theme of it all is mourning - and if this mourning comes at the end of Paris Fashion Week. Amazing quality of the cut, there is every ingredient that makes Thom Browne recognisable, included the jacket + shorts suit. Feminine-inspired pieces for men were alternated to more manly silhouettes. The thing I liked the most was, paradoxically, the life exuding from every garment, like in the aztec print beautifully camouflaged in a ton-sur-ton black: there is life after death, and Thom Browne wants to be designer in it as well.
The honour of actually closing in Paris was given, of course, to Hedi Slimane for Saint Laurent. I understand Slimane’s style is 70s, edgy, rock, but there should be something changing, because in this way I’m just getting the same thing every season. And then there were too many too similar looks. Apart from very few strong pieces, in general it was something extremely predictable.
xxx
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Walter Van Beirendonck spring—summer 1988.
The summer collection ‘88 Un Autre Monde (another world) endeavours to merge visions from greatly differing worlds. The world and visions of Jules Verne (high-tech visions from the year 1870), the world of the African Massai, Nuba and Wodaabe tribes, whose way of life is still primitive, closely earth-linked and basic, but which posses a rich culture and fantastic body ornaments. Reminiscent of the Flinstone family (Pebbles, Bam Bam and Dino), of submarines and uniforms, impressions from “Blue Velvet” and “Angel heart”, prehistoric figures and even inspiration from Sado, Walter’s dog, have lent the collection the necessary essence of humour and fun, it’s aggression and strength. Clothing for active, strong and ‘fantastic’ people, who have an interest in the past, but are already living in the future.
The silhouettes are nicely rounded off and inspired by helmet-wearing divers, together with a touch of folklore. The outsides of the models feature various details that are sometime subtle, sometimes aggressive. Navels, buttocks and sex are accentuated; there are even rubber nipples on some items. Hand-knitted pullovers and cardigans feature check patterns and stripes, dogs and bones, African armbands and necklaces and body paintings. Prehistoric creatures, “safe-sex-bones" and figures from 2001 are featured in sweatshirts, t-shirts and trousers. Black, shiny straw hats, bones in the hair, T.Rex.-and Bam Bam caps. Diver’s and pilot’s goggles, telescopes and cameras inspire spectacles. Basic colours, shades of red, blue and green mixed with beige, off-white, green, navy, blue and black. Fabrics feature Vichy checks and square patterns. Cotton gabardine trousers, cool wool, Swiss cotton, crepe, silk, leather and rough, checked, elasticised folklore-look are all featured.
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Walter Van Beirendonck W.&L.T. spring—summer 1997.
Show:
Simultaneously at the Elysée Montmartre and the Trianon Theatre, Paris.
Setting:
Aliens landed at the Elysée Montmartre and stepped out of a huge video screen. They walked straight out of the room and into the street to the Trianon Theatre, where British band Agent Provocateur was performing live. Then, all models/aliens returned to the Elysée Montmartre revealed the second venue with the cheering audience and the big finale.
Styling: the M.i.B.: 40 ‘Kachina’ warriors with black helmets and masks, E.T.: 40 sweet and ecologically aware aliens and U.F.O.: 40 Eastern Toyboys and Glam Geishas wearing oversized, brightly coloured and decorated ‘traditional’ wigs.
Invitation: A Puk-Puk watch with a fresh cabdy fragrance.
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Walter Van Beirendonck spring—summer 2001. Maori man, 1999.
Fashion is the starting point for this exceptional exhibition, in search of historical, ethnic and aesthetic points of contact. From these several angles, MUTILATE?-VERMINK? offers a survey of the various ways throughout history and all over the world man has used extreme, bizarre, crazy and singular forms of fashion, body decoration and manipulation. It shows how man is forever adapting his appearance, mostly for social and religious reasons. Among other things, it shows several aspects of the history of Western fashion, including 18th-century crinolines and corsets and more recent expressions of fashion such as body painting and other Western body cultures. In addition it focuses on ethnographic and anthropological items such as skull distortions, scarification, lip discs and so on.
MUTILATE?-VERMINK? offers an insight into various forms of bodily mutilation, in which context avatars also assume significance, as if this were a provisional end to an evolution that is both characteristic of humans but at the same time alien. MUTILATE?-VERMINK? cannot be placed under a single heading, but provides, rather, a picture of various approaches, in which the notion of ‘fashion’ is questioned and apparently divergent phenomena are brought face to face.
Curator: Walter Van Beirendonck
Design: Walter Van Beirendonck with B-architecten
Coordination, research and secretariat: Kurt Van Belleghem and Els Roelandt for Aprior
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Walter Van Beirendonck autumn—winter 1993—94.
The Autumn/Winter 93/94 collection, for men and women, is called ‘Souvenirs of the World’.
10 numbered pieces of knitwear, each with its own story:
N°1 Double you W-America
N°2 Fear of Flowers - Italy
N°3 Fetish - for Madonna
N°4 Wraaf - Friends Forever/Sado 80-91
N°5 Nouba - Soudan/Moro Mountains/Africa
N°6 Souvenir - Haida/North America
N°7 Pure Male - Tirol
N°8 Mask - Holland
N°9 Square - Tirol
N°10 Art - E.Kelly/New York/USA/Woodabe/Niger/Africa
“Each sweater is numbered to guarantee its originality, quality and exclusivity.
Wearing a Walter Van Beirendonck-knit is a once in a lifetime experience.
I hope people will cherish and treasure it the way I do.”
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