Julien David likes to think of his pre-collections as opportunities for experiment. His latest outing conjured images of the designer as a kind of drive-in-movie mad scientist, jury-rigging gadgets at his studio-cum-laboratory. It wasn’t that David seemed in any way mad, merely that his collection struck that vein of ’60s culture where everyone was consumed with nostalgia for the future. If you’d asked someone 40 years ago how they envisioned 2016, they would have described hoverboards, robots that do our chores, virtual reality. And they would have been right! Mostly wrong, but kind of right. David’s collection paid tribute to that space race–era optimism.
David doesn’t usually go for a vintage vibe, and here, he referenced it with a few canny gestures. There was the collection’s chipper palette, for one, and tweaked mod silhouettes. Thanks to the tweaking, you wouldn’t mistake these clothes for ones dug out of a thrift store bin—David attenuated his A-lines or blew out their volumes to create fresh, slightly oddball proportions. (He does like an oddball proportion.) He also introduced a modern sense of street by giving his cropped wool trousers an elastic waistband and a track pant–ish slouch, and offering knits and blouses in the shape of loose-fitting tees. Meanwhile, David’s robot prints—one in silk twill check and one digital, on jersey—had the distinctively camp attitude of a person looking back on the past’s idea of the future with a knowing yet appreciative wink.
Of all David’s experiments, it will likely be his play with textiles that pays dividends in future collections. His fringed fil coupe and organza were ripe for continued development; so too his clever idea of patchworking material together and sealing the pieces with small rivets. In both cases, the effects could be created using offcuts of fabric—material that might otherwise go to waste. That would be a way of contending with the future—not the past’s idea of it, but our actual own.
