Walking into the Lichting, a showcase for design students during Amsterdam Fashion Week in September, I was met with a peculiar scene. At the bottom of the stairway leading up to the floor was a sprawling spiral of earth, with dancers moving slowly and rhythmically across it. The clothes they wore, casual Mad Max-style sweatshirts, were lent to them by friends. In fact, even though it was technically a fashion show, the designer didn’t design any garments.
“Nobody wants to get their clothes dirty, but we do,” Lotte de Jager, the student behind the performance, tells me backstage. “There are already too many clothes in the world, and to be really honest, it starts with me. so instead [of designing a collection]I tried to reconsider the body as a central piece of the fashion system”.
Lotte de Jager’s “catwalk” in Lichting.
Photographed by Peter Stigter; Courtesy of Lichting.
Though visually less explosive than Balenciaga’s recent mud runway, De Jager’s earthen presentation had a similar transgressive edge. And it was just one of many surprises I found during Amsterdam Fashion Week, which took place just before the official “fashion month” cycle in New York, London, Milan and Paris. Best known for its electronic music, architecture and interior design, the Dutch capital has slowly developed a pool of leading fashion talent, many of whom are actively breaking industry norms in clever ways. Cut off from the pressures and standards of the establishment, these voices are openly deconstructing and subverting the industry’s most entrenched language, from fashion’s obsession with novelty to the rigid format of fashion shows and so many other unspoken rules about what’s new. what we can and cannot tell through clothing. .
“Eight years ago, when I started what I’m doing now, I made a very conscious decision to do it from Amsterdam, because I wanted to get away from the fashion world,” says Ronald van der Kemp, a designer who shows his demi-couture creations both in Paris as in Amsterdam. “I’ve worked in New York, Paris and Milan, so I know what it’s like. You feel that you have to adhere to certain things that are happening, and you feel that you have to be a part of it. In Amsterdam, it’s more of an experiment.”
Virgin Mary performing in the Duran Lantink show.
Courtesy of Duran Lantink.
The crowd outside the Lantink show.
Courtesy of Duran Lantink
From her studio in the city’s historic center, van der Kemp creates glamorous pieces with punk undertones from materials that would otherwise have gone to waste. At Amsterdam Fashion Week, she showed a TikTok-style movie of Kim Kardashian describing her 30,000-piece wardrobe alongside images of Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the literal wastelands where tons of Western-bought clothes end up, often after only a few saw
“This fashion week had a very different focus,” explains van der Kemp, referring to the commercial nature and spotlight circus of the main cycle. “The four main cities are all about doing a trick during the fashion show. It has become so important to everything else except actual clothing. Amsterdam is very pure.”
The designer’s considered confrontational attitude speaks to a broader creative culture in the Dutch capital: take the work of Duran Lantink, a 2019 LVMH Award finalist known for splicing, dicing and reimagining discarded luxury collections into upcycled designs with a strong message. During the pandemic, Lantink stole the materials for an entire capsule collection from fast-fashion flagships (“the biggest kleptomaniacs,” he alludes), translated stolen Zara and H&M into subversively feminine garments, then handed over half the proceeds to the families of garment workers from Bangladesh. Stylist Patti Wilson recently dressed her clients Beyoncé and Lizzo in her high-concept pieces; Billie Eilish is a fan.
Pandora’s Jukebox performing at the Wandler’s Amsterdam Fashion Week event.
Photographed by Rowben Lantion; Courtesy of Wandler.
The designer Elza Wandler.
Photographed by Dion Bal; Courtesy of Wandler.
Lantink’s focus at Amsterdam Fashion Week? He took over the Moulin Rouge in the red light district for a performance in collaboration with shoe brand Steve Madden. For the show, Lantink designed a barely-there bodysuit for Spanish electronic artist Virgin Mary, who performed alongside local dancers and Congolese movement artist Christian Yavl. Inviting editors to a sex club, a space so often exotic but rarely garnered genuine respect, makes a strong statement. “At first I tried Casa Rosso,” says Lantink with a wink, referring to the oldest live sex theater in the city. “They told me they didn’t even give it to the Prince of Brunei. I said that it was a big mistake, because we are going to bring the Virgin Mary”. Meanwhile, Elza Wandler, the wunderkind behind the fast-growing label Wandler, commissioned multidisciplinary artist Elsemarijn Bruys to wrap Amsterdam’s Van Eesterenmuseum in chrome green for a Fifth Element-inspired rave last AFW, complete with models who imitated Milla Jovovich’s iconic character, Leeloo, in everything. Pandora’s Jukebox, the regular for Berghain and Cicciolina, played. Humour, creativity, frankness and tranquility: this is Amsterdam.
The same spirit is embodied by young and established voices alike, from Denzel Veerkamp, who explored his identity as a mixed-race black man in the Netherlands in his collection of Willem de Kooning Academy graduates, and internationally recognized names. like Iris Van Herpen and Viktor & Rolf’s. Rolf Snoeren and Viktor Horsting. Like van der Kemp, the duo returned to the city where they both grew up after more than a decade in Paris to have a more fluid relationship with their craft.
Designers Rolf Snoeren and Viktor Horsting.
Photographed by Parool HildeHarshagen; Courtesy of Viktor & Rolf.
“Over the years, we’ve found that we work best in a more isolated environment, where we’re away from the fashion world but can choose to drop in whenever we want,” says Snoeren, explaining that practices like yoga and mindfulness—most accessible in small-town European calm—are influencing her surreal couture aesthetics and fragrance concepts. “We recognize a renewed sense of reality that also comes from living in Amsterdam,” adds Horsting.
Designer Renée van Wijngaarden of the lively three-year-old label 1/Off, whose wares are stocked at Selfridges and 10 Corso Como, suggests that part of the reason for the recent rise in fashion culture in Amsterdam is a subsequent international influx. to Brexit. : “In the past, the Dutch market was always super commercial in terms of fashion, so many creatives had to move abroad to be in the luxury segment,” says the designer, speaking to me from her studio next to the channel. . “The Netherlands and the capital are more international at the moment, so there are also more opportunities for luxury and for more creative teams to set up a business.”
Although venturing abroad to show is still very much a part of the formula (as evidenced by Wandler, van der Kemp, Viktor and Rolf, and soon Lantink’s presence in Paris), there is definitely something in the air here. “It happens at the right time, at the right time, and it’s the right design,” Wandler tells me, speaking of his own brand journey but hinting at the energy that he is beginning to define his home base. . “The way brands are traditionally built and what is expected of us is gone. We’re making their own rules now.”
Source: news.google.com