Retro-futurism colored by personal nostalgia, plus an intense sensitivity both to trompe l’oeil fabrications and long-fossilized workwear details: It sounds like a painfully complicated fashion recipe. Yet Julien David somehow managed to tie it all together. Today these ingredients were set sweetly in a collection that delivered progressive basics (with a bit of a twist) and hyper-colored, manga-flavored looks that will be catnip for the street style crowd.
The first third of the collection was about the interplay between white, matte indigo, and shiny black. These three staple colors were arranged and rearranged in persuasive combinations, including a split skirt featuring 18 rectangular 3-D panels (a key collection garment) in bonded technical denim; white shirts and a jacket of cotton poplin, nylon twill, or jersey; and black leather-bonded pants, coats, and off-the-shoulder tunic dresses, but with little bulbous details, like more panels at the elbow of an especially “Yes, please!” black jacket.
Phase two started in earnest after an interjection of plum denim-but-not-workwear looks. The focus was on coats, one studded panel dress, and that 3-D skirt again, all rendered in explosively toned patches printed with laser strafing and depictions of wide-eyed aliens taken from Grendizer, an anime cartoon that David and his brother used to watch as kids. If you like a manga-print piece, then you’ll like these.
Nearing the end of his orbit, David drifted into Courrèges territory by re-rendering his shapes in a combination of white faux leather and aluminum-coated jersey. Spanning genres past and putatively futuristic, this collection felt perfectly present.
