It's been a long season for Damir Doma. The designer presented his men's collection in Paris on Saturday, just back from having shown, for the first time ever, his women's Resort collection on the runway, as the invited guest of Pitti Immagine in Florence. It was perhaps inevitable that the two read as chapters of the same story. "I'm just one designer," Doma said after the show. "The collections go hand in hand."
The reduced palette—white, Yves Klein blue, amethyst—connected the two, as did the gridded prints and a spotted laminate fabric that had a hint of flypaper to it. But while the women's collection was notable in its hugging of the body, the men's silhouettes exaggerated it to outré effect. Doma played with raglan sleeves, sloping them around shoulders to emphasize their swoop. Pleated pants added volume, emphasized all the more by those that buttoned at the cuff, and the waist became a particular point of emphasis. The high-waisted pants were more awkward than appealing, but Doma hit on an interesting idea by topstitching the waist panels of a Saharienne to add contour without elasticity.
Doma has always operated at a remove from the reigning trends in men's fashion. His embrace of the muscular, exaggerated silhouette, with its shades of the Mugler/Montana eighties, left him a bit out of context with the season. But with new investment behind him, a recently opened Paris store, and the better production that money affords, he was reveling in a newfound confidence. The odd decals that decorated a few of his pieces—faces, places—were what he called "memory patches," excerpts from the private mood boards he creates for himself and his team every season. He'd always kept them out of the spotlight, but he's now self-assured enough to show his hand. "They connect the clothes with my references," he said.
