It’s a midsummer night’s, surreal dream beside the pool of a hotel particulier in Paris, or a chic neighborhood close to town.
There’s a heatwave and the elegant young people there for a private fête are drinking champagne, smoking cigarettes and weed and listening to Andalusian hip hop pop.
For SS20 Afterhomework(Paris) raises the temperature with a collection that’s dressier, a very specific way of dressing for this soirée, as easy as a light towel wrapped around bare skin.
This vision of an evening led Pierre Kaczmarek and Elena Mottola to imagine their lives, the fêtes past, present and future, and the way everyday materials can be twisted and transformed (denim, old handkerchiefs, kitchen basics and credit cards) into dreams.
If there’s any message here it’s seize the day, accept reality and waste nothing in a way that’s become second nature for young people. No speech required.
“It’s more than the underground, it’s a mix of Right Bank, Left Bank, metropolitan Paris and everything that surrounds it. This city is one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world, but with such a heterogeneous style,” say Kaczmarek and Mottola.
Inspiration is found everywhere they go on the course of a working day from the Montreuil flea market where they search for old fabrics, to the characters dressed “every which way” in the neighborhood around their atelier and onto Paris’s “beaux quartiers.”
This season’s key pieces, from mini skirts to sturdy dresses, click into place like Lego blocks in extremely simplified constructions with lots of topstitching, deformed with buttons, studs and straps. Accessories are nonexistent, or supersized like garbage bags. The color of choice is high summer white, there’s no black at all. This extends through a palette of non-colors on the pastel side, all with a sun-faded look. Solidly constructed fabrics: denim cotton, technical blends, and kitchen tablecloth foam underline the ‘waste not, want not’ aesthetic.
There’s no name for this collection, but the adage by Erasmus from “In Praise of Folly”, “Fire doesn’t extinguish fire,” seems apt. “We began with nothing but passion and fire. And from one season to the next we’re finding our rhythm, balance and peace.”
Source: Afterhomework