Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Madrid, an event organised by IFEMA, had a great turnout for its 68th edition held from 6 to 11 July, at IFEMA-Feria de Madrid and other venues in the city. The grand Spanish fashion show assembled 47 outstanding Spanish creators and brands and, like last January’s edition, was held on new dates, two months earlier than usual, kicking off the international calendar to boost the event’s international projection.
Samsung EGOs emerging talent opened the fashion show
As a new development, young talents from Samsung EGO were responsible for kicking off the fashion show programme in hall 14.1 on Saturday the 7th, with the presentation of Constanza+Lab, winner of the tenth edition of the Samsung EGO Innovation Project, which was followed by the creations of another eight young designers.
COSTANZA + LAB
… Surrounded by chaos, dizzying speeds, a hostile environment, in the era of the supersmart and super-beings – GARMENTS WITH SUPERPOWERS are here.
QUANTUM collection: GARMENTS WITH EMPATHY THAT FEEL AND REVEAL THE INVISIBLE, garments that express the intangible, garments that embellish our emotions with light.
MINIMALIST FASHIONTECH + COSMIC ACCESSORIES: The garments are intentionally simple. With functional, structural purity and marked horizontal and vertical lines, these geometric patterns have been simplified using the seams themselves. Each fabric, element and texture is fused with a new material: light, creating new codes for emotional communication.
The collection reflects light in the choice of pure WHITE, the star colour. The decision was taken based on the physics of colour: when a body looks white, it is because it is receiving all the basic colours of the spectrum (red + green + blue) and reflecting them back, generating the mixture of these three colours, white. Light also becomes a customisable print that users can choose. A new ecosystem that connects virtual and real worlds through clothing and accessories; a new way of interacting with garments and, by extension, with the world. A nod to the Internet of things (IOT): an object connected to a mobile device that changes its behaviour.
Telephones/tablets/devices connect with our garments and translate the virtual world to express complex matters like emotions and mood. Our garments become a flexible interface that helps us to interact, experiment, enjoy ourselves or simply understand ourselves, enabling a new level of communication: user/garment + user/environment + garment/environment.
ZAP_BUJ
This collection approaches landscape and clothing through the concept of skin or wrapping. The body is wrapped by several skins: our own skin, clothing, architecture, cities… These layers can approach each other and draw closer to the body, our most intimate wrapper. Here, two apparently distant scales are united: land and the body.
A broader view of the landscape; the natural-artificial landscape. This collection is inspired by the natural landscape impacted by man and the urban landscape of our cities. What interests us is the blurry line between nature and the man-made environment. All these landscapes generate textures. Visible or invisible skins that surround our bodies and connect us to the environment. This collection investigates unusual materials in the fashion world such as silicone, thermal technical insulation sheets, plastics with acetate and perspex. Technology is applied to these skins through digital design tools and prototyping (laser cutting) to adapt the materials to the body. This softens these hard skins with cut work and repeating elements and by applying flexible silicones. The clear, shiny tones in the collection evoke watery marine landscapes, rice paddies built by man and the light architectural materials in our cities. All this creates an aerial view of the body on this hazy yet clear verge.
Applying technology to the enveloping suit and enveloping landscape opens new possibilities for them to interact. We might ask ourselves how close we can get. Why not imagine fashion responding to criteria other than aesthetics, relating fluidly with our surroundings?
JESSICA CONZEN
EXOTIKA is inspired by my total admiration for folklore, an expression of tradition still found in peoples around the world, values handed from generation to generation, creating our identity, making us who we are. With an ever-present ethnic yet avant-garde touch, here is a prêt à porter collection inspired by distant, exotic places, whose flora and fauna populate EXOTIKA SS19. A combination of shapes, textures and subtle fluidity mark this feminine, masculine, sensual, wild collection with a rock & roll soul. EXOTIKA represents the femininity and strength of a woman with character and a free spirit.
OUTSIDERS DIVISION
How to dress for special occasions.
1. Don’t be afraid of colours. Unexpected things happen when you put them together.
2. Iron your favourite tracksuit and add your father’s blazer if it’s cold.
3. You’ll need a belt bag to hold your belongings.
4. Shoes yes, but worn with a tracksuit.
5. “Be yourself. You are Okay”.
6. Dance to your favourite punk track while you dress in front of the mirror.
7. That cap looks amazing with that outfit.
8. Wear clothes with your favourite graphics – it’s a special occasion.
9. Good becomes bad and bad becomes good. That’s just the way it is.
10. Every day could be the last or the first. Best make great memories.
11. Send your bow ties up in flames!
12. Always wear socks.
13. Constantly rethink your idea of elegance.
For the Spring/Summer 2019 collection, Christian Simmontook his inspiration from the concept of Tension.
He speaks of the tension that exists in romantic relationships; based on the “First Summer of Love” (1967), famous for its hippie aesthetic, and the “Second Summer of Love”, which embraced the famous “raves”. “Tension” seeks to interweave these two cultures with simple, delicate lines; combining contrasting aesthetics, like sweatshirts over delicate linen dresses. Updated garments come in exquisite materials like linen, chiffon and silk, striking a contrast with sportier fabrics like jersey. An extremely sensual collection cleansed by its delicate fabrics. Bias-cut pieces, patterns that seem misshapen (by tension), accessories that seem to restrict movement which, fused with their apparent simplicity, fills this collection with TENSION.
Dominnico Spring/Summer 19 – Revolution & Decadence
Summer 2019 will be an ode to the eccentricity and naffness of fashion from the 60’s to the present. The collection has been named Revolution & Decadence which is intended in a critical sense, drawing on the idea that we claim to be “revolutionary” and strive to stand out from every one else by frenetically trying to do something modern and “new” every six months, when in fact all we do is feed on decades and centuries gone-by to produce creations based on our current perspective of fashion, spurred by social media. But we do nothing “new” – it is just a fresh take on what we have already seen and experienced or what we have claimed from other earlier authors, which is the idea that inspired the word decadence. Obvious trends such as 1960’s miniskirt or 1970’s bell-bottoms, touching on the punk style and animal prints conjugated with holographic textures in the purest aesthetic fashion. All of this is joined by such seemingly unrelated inspirations as Elton John, Vivienne Westwood and Destiny’s Child to conform a collection that evokes the past engraved in our memories.
EUPHEMIO FERNANDEZ
THE LOVERS is the last collection in the Trilogy of Life. This final collection concludes a Trilogy inspired by the designer’s family’s past, his memories and his artistic heritage, which all started with death (MANIFESTO SS2017), then continued with life through the feeling of hatred (THE HATEFUL 17/18) and now ends with the concept of childhood, innocence and love.
The collection covers three generations: the decade of his grandparents (1940s), the time of their daughters (late 50s and early 60s) and the period of their grandchildren (late 80s and early 90s). The aesthetics will be defined by silhouettes, shapes and reminiscences from those years. Unisex garments with a timeless feel. The link between this collection and its predecessors is established through the poems his grandfather wrote for his grandmother and their daughters in the prints. These poems spoke of sibling love, of family love, of romantic love and of friendship. Poems based on the love and devotion his grandfather felt towards his family and his wife are captured in combination with a crafted collage of old photographs and different effects. Inspiration was drawn from the work of Jacques Villeglé for his poster-like style.
The concept of flowers and petals is conveyed in the items in the form of frills and openings, using latex to treat the fabrics differently and creating new canvas-like materials. Machine embroidery adorns serge, tweed and denim, as well as corsets and other pieces. Classic tailoring, wide-fit jackets and blazers, printed quilt and dresses with enticing openings and large rosettes of fabric and frills. Scraps from each of the trilogy’s collections have been reused to create items of considerable aesthetic significance thanks to the volumes and various textures formed. A collection in collaboration with Pardo Hats for the millinery, with Pedrusco for the jewellery, with Yevalú for the footwear and with Inmaculada Vergara for handbags and accessories.
ANDRES ZURRU
BERGHAIN – DAVID NEVER WORE A LEAF
Illusory and unreal, Hans Christian Anderson reminds us of a moral, an apparently superficial moral, that goes unnoticed and in stealth. A story that forms, develops and transforms into an allegory. Without pretension or ambition, the plot is revealed.
A plot that underlines and focuses our attention on the moment we have been waiting for from the start: the instant when someone tells the king the truth. Vulnerable and stripped of his attire, the king, with no other alternative, forces himself to keep going, and rather than flaunting his transparent, non-existent garments, displays courage and intellect beyond the judgement of others. The collection explores the idea of staying true to one’s convictions, emancipated and autarchic, free from external prohibitions and taboos, facing the naked man from an artistic, cultural and historic perspective in contrast with a prejudiced, apprehensive or distorted view. With the hegemonic base of the tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the collections allude to moments in history and draw upon two pivotal moments in their silhouettes, textures, materials and details. There are touches from the Victorian period, the origin of double morality. Based on traditional tailoring, a direct legacy of New Imperialism, with scattered details of women’s clothing from the era to mark the distinction between the sexes. In contrast, it uses aspects from the sexual revolution, which challenge traditional codes of conduct concerning concepts of morality. It reaches its peak at the end of the seventies, with the punk aesthetic. Together, these styles symbolise an artificial, synthetic, dramatic image of multiple taboos, hiding sexuality and nudity due to fear of judgement.
Adam Kostpresents his men’s clothing collection for the A/W 18 season, entitled “Fuiste una vez, como somos ahora” (You used to be the way we are now). Adam Kost explores the subject of youth, brotherhood and adolescence. The name of the collection draws on the common theme based on passing generations, and every outfit embodies the interminable contradiction between brotherhood, friendship and community.
The main inspiration for the collection was English boarding schools. The collection describes the student lifestyle, so full of contradictions. A young man challenged by constant dichotomy between discipline and freedom. The feeling stays with him throughout the day, which is why the balance between discipline and freedom is clear in every style in the collection. The essence of the collection is conveyed by eighteen young men with different styles, though all connected by a shared air of uniformity.
33 MAGAZINE 