Jean Touitou obviously appreciates that the strength of his A.P.C. collections is their functionality. They're not about the planned redundancy of shifting trends. But he also knows that he has to sell these clothes. They wouldn't sustain the glare of a catwalk spotlight, so Touitou shills on their behalf like a tent show hawker, spinning a story for a string of small audiences, making himself the embodiment of the A.P.C. ethos. This season, for instance, he described himself as a former "militant revolutionary" who replaced Marxism with "existentialist rock 'n' roll." So he took us on a trip through his record collection.
"Music production is like fashion production," said Touitou, as he hit the first track, Jonathan Richman's "I'm Straight." "Constructing and deconstructing sound is like what a fashion designer does, making something exciting with boring elements." He chose the Richman song because a pretty straight song was transformed by the addition of a weedy Farfisa organ, in the same way that a twisty little detail animates a prosaic outfit.
Each track that Touitou played was accompanied by six models. If it was hard to see exactly what the first group's Farfisa equivalent was, the second group was done up in neat, tidy New Wave looks—white jean jacket, red turtleneck, blue pants—that fit the ticktock crispness of Marie et les Garçons' "Re-Bop Attitudes." "It was on the jukebox at Max's Kansas City," said Touitou, which was exactly the kind of detail that would make him love a piece of music.
Then came Blondie's "Heart of Glass," accompanied by a Lurex sweater, a leopard-print shirt, and a straight-out-of-the-'80s blouson. Touitou introduced it with a story about producer Mike Chapman transforming a song that was originally a slow burn into a disco stomper by adding the demo beat of an early drum machine called the CR78. "The same way that fashion rewrites the past." And the same way that Neil Young turned a '50s rock 'n' roller called "Farmer John" into a slashing geetar track for the penultimate passage. Plaid shirts, cargo pants, overalls, and a khaki parka for that one. "In men's fashion, we're always looking for an excuse to show denim and khaki."
The presentation, eclecticism incarnate, ended with a burst of Pet Shop Boys for Touitou protégé Louis Wong's poppy finale. You could understand why there would be people who might find the whole situation a little too oblique, but Touitou is a full-service one-man show. A little entertainment, a little education, a little enlightenment about Spring 2016 at A.P.C.
