If there is any place in Paris that one associates with Ann Demeulemeester, it is the Reféctoire des Cordeliers, a hall within a former convent with stone walls and a dark ambience. This show brought us back to the venue, but Ann Demeulemeester under Stefano Gallici is diverging more and more from her collections of yore.
While this might seem jarring to the purists, he’s clearly doing something right, given a sea of attendees stylistically subscribing to his broader—yet personal—vision of the brand. A front row of music artists including Jack White, Demi Lovato, and Ty Dolla $ign was also telling. Today’s insouciant spin on historical dress made the collection, titled The Solitary One: A Love Story in Rebellion, well suited to musicians who are into neo-Victoriana and Jimi Hendrix 2.0 stage attire.
In the brand’s Paris studio prior to the show, Gallici gave context for injections of color such as the red regiment coats and pink brocade pajama pieces—both treated as if to appear faded by time. He cited his love for Pride and Prejudice (which he read in both Italian and English); a more modern love story set in L.A., Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess by Danny Sugerman; and his boyhood love of basketball. The opening look—a dramatic dress coat over a high-neck blouse and satiny shorts worn with industrial boots—captured it all. He developed the empire silhouettes of sleep dresses and paired them with fringed robes and fitted jackets—the most impressive of these a white laser-cut leather resembling lace—while also merging basketball and sleep separates (as though your court shorts and jersey double as pj’s). Sport headbands were accented with feathers for a dreamy touch.
“There’s an interpretation of love in the way Jane Austen wrote that gets lost nowadays,” Gallici said. “And I think it’s so nice to cherish those readings, and I feel this urge to spread them to new generations. That’s why there are a lot of personal feelings in this collection.”
Perhaps his Italian roots combined with an affinity for the West Coast—its mythic stars and free-spiritedness, the vintage that he swears is the best in the world—inform an aesthetic so different from Ann Demeulemeester’s made-in-Antwerp, subdued drama. Yet Gallici, who takes workmanship seriously, is simply defining the brand’s dark romance on his own terms. And attracting a younger audience is a clever plot twist.
