Color, directness, asymmetry, and conceit. Even for those less fluently intimate with the language of Ann Demeulemeester—and the suddenly interjected accent of its designer Sébastien Meunier—this collection presented an explicit point of view and attitude. Tightish sleeveless denim-style jackets in black or white were often the anchor around which Meunier's currents swirled; beneath them were sleeves and pulled-up, popped-back shirt cuffs, and the drop hems of untucked shirts. Lower still came pants, sometimes gauzily transparent in Meunier's ramped-up burnt orange and dark emerald color scheme. These colors and the contrasts of monochrome were usually utilized as punctuation marks to emphasize the contours of his apparently jumbled but, in fact, exhaustively landscaped strata. Sheer pants will be a giant leap for many men. Not all of Meunier's conversations flowed. But enough did, and in a direction that felt energizing-ly liberated from Demeulemeester's gravitational pull.
Afterward, Meunier enunciated that sense of respectful liberation, saying of this collection: "This was a research of love. But it is a research that is in between the traditional love and something more energetic, something more young and fresh that is not too formal. We want to refresh our atmosphere in something that is Ann Demeulemeester today. She worked with her emotion, and I speak about mine with hopefully the same poetry but in a different tension. When you have the responsibility with this kind of house, you first have to respect it. And to show that—I'm an old one of the house and I know Ann very well—well, I have shown that. But I need to show my own heart and my own self."
As the musical accompaniment to the show warmed up, a recording played of James Cernan, an astronaut who was part of the mission that captured the first photograph of Earth from space, reflecting on his experience staring back at the world. In it he said: "You have to literally just pinch yourself and ask yourself the question, silently: Do you know where you are at this point in time and space, and in reality and in existence, when you can look out the window and you're looking at the most beautiful star in the heavens? The most beautiful because it's the one we understand and we know, it's home, it's people, family, love, life." That idea of standing apart from something beloved only to see it anew felt joyfully relevant to this collection.
