Lulu Kennedy is on a roll at Fashion East, what with two of her recent Fashion East alums, Karoline Vitto and Michael Stewart of Standing Ground, contending in this year’s LVMH Prize—and Maximilian Davis having been springboarded straight from her runway into the creative directorship of Ferragamo.
This season, it was Johanna Parv’s third bite of the cherry on the runway, and Olly Schinder’s second. A third designer label, Sosskyn by Samara Scott Studio was introduced in the form of a slide-projection of an upcycled textile and print-led collection. She’s one of those new-era designers who are making sustainability sexy.
The originality of Johanna Parv’s slick collection is that it doesn’t look particularly like outdoor performance-wear, but that’s how it’s designed to function. “Techy tailoring” is a term she’s nailed for women who cycle and power-walk across cities—increasingly the best option for getting about as urban planners nudge populations out of cars. For winter, Parv’s tonal layered wardrobe pieces have built-in technicalities transposed “more from ski-wear” for winter, she said. She pointed out out “lightly-insulated” mini skirts (“I call them bum-warmers!”) and a couple of bags made to double as muffs. Essentially, her ideas smooth out the clunky annoyances of carrying stuff and battling unpredictable weather: efficient harnesses for carrying bags, capes to drape over hand-held ones, jackets with adaptable vents which can be thrown over a backpack in a downpour.
Olly Shinder is designing for another type of city-navigation reality. His own uniform for street and BDSM club scenes shares the language of homoerotica with designers of his own, and older, generations: Ludovic de Saint Sernan and Raul Lopez to name but two. Shinder’s nipple-baring black leather aprons, latex-lingerie body-wear, waders, and four-fingered gloves are eye-magnets, right enough. “We just wanted an obscene neckline this season,” he said. “Something sexy, rubbery, and latex.”
Shinder’s strength—becoming more visible in his sophomore outing—is that he’s also making pragmatic clothing, based on workwear tropes with technical details like jigsawed snaps, shirts cut with built-in ties, and (new this season) a crinkle-textured pseudo-army camo fabric. It all holds together as a sellable proposition—remarkable at such an early career stage. That’s no doubt helped by the down-to-earth mentoring and retail realism of Adrian Joffe, who supports Shinder (and a clutch of other young indies) in the Comme des Garçons showroom in Paris. Shinder produces the clothes himself, Joffe said backstage, but it’s providing the space, the endorsement, and feedback that’s ever more invaluable for young designers in this cold climate.
