Brown chaps over steel-tipped brown boots under tailored black pants and a cummberbunded velvet-collared half-topcoat in black, with a white faux pocket triangle. A blue jersey dress with power shoulders and an inserted high sort-of crinoline emplacement at the hem, above scarlet patent heels and what looked like a binoculars case. Wide-waist, elasticated sports shorts. Skinny ties. A grinning toad. Knuckle-dusters.
It was challenging to fathom quite what Sportmax hoped we would parse from this grab bag of a collection that contained some hits, some misses, but most of all plenty of dots that didn’t seem to meaningfully connect. The press release revealed that the graphics that ran across the collection, some referring to Nico’s final album, 1985’s Camera Obscura, were “prints inspired by album covers,” which made these illustrated pieces dressed-up merch by imaginary cover bands. It also mentioned Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, Annie Lennox, and Siouxsie Sioux—all great artists, all arbitrarily bundled.
There seemed to be quite a lot of conceptual boob play going on—rib-knit cupping and mohair sulcus framing and look-here corsetry—plus some vaguely medical girdling details inexplicably adorned by that toad. Effectively moody, complicated curatorwear included an off-the-shoulder tailored jumpsuit with uneven tinsel sleeves that linked manelike around the back. An off-the-shoulder ruffled dress in black patent leather looked like a have-cake/eat-cake rebuke to the idea of male-gaze eye candy, while also functioning as male-gaze eye candy. The menswear was apparently related to Buffalo: Eh?
Apart from a penchant for kohl, the Sportmax-cited female artists were connected by their songs’ expressions of love, disappointment, anger, elation, and despair: The material spun by experience. The core Sportmax design team is a highly gifted group of women with a profound knowledge of their craft. What seemed off in this collection was the incoherence of the agenda behind it. The press release, mentioning Nico, made reference to mystery, aloofness, and enigma. If this collection was by association also an enigma, it was one you didn’t feel compelled to solve.
