Marine Serre, a 29-year-old French designer who launched Paris Fashion Week with perhaps the most human, immersive, and fully realized digital “activation” of the entire fashion month, founded her brand only three years ago. Her work was featured in Beyoncé’s “Black is King” visual album. Not only does she have a well-known logo that has nothing to do with her initials—it’s a moon print—but she also has her own ideology—ecofuturism—and was upcycling long before it became fashionable. She also recognized the need for face masks long before they were a medical necessity.
Doesn’t it ring like a movement? But what does it even mean?
Theoretically, it means replacing futurist machine worship with reverence for the earth and the concept of rebirth. In fashion, it’s a terrific collection.
Or, to be more specific, a book, a documentary, and clothes that looked awfully appealing to wear. Ms. discarded her previous apocalyptic visions of the natural disaster we may have caused, such as clothes for the wasteland and the pods of humanity that will be left after the storm. In her reworked leather greatcoats and trousers, repurposed knitwear, lacy shirts made from old household linen, and lilac suiting made from regenerated moiré, Serre created filmed vignettes of family and friends doing things like cooking, gardening, and playing on tire swings. Each scene contained a virtual wormhole, allowing you to instantly enter the garment’s backstory by clicking. You could see the team deconstruct and reassemble the raw materials, giving them new life, in the ateliers and scrap factories where the garments are made. If a chimera were real, this is how it would look. That provides hope for fashion as well as the environment and our rotting piles of possessions. A new generation of designers are creating a lot of the most provocative work this season, possibly because they have less to lose or because they don’t really care about the old fashion system. It’s the kind of work that brings you out of the fog of hours spent staring at Zooms like zombies and starts you thinking about the future as well as the problems of the present.
