You would have needed to pay extra special attention to the embroidered masks worn by Julien David's models to notice their various expressions and how they riffed off his theme of "hyperbolic characters." The animations included "funny, evil, worry, king, and serene," which the designer said he conceived as a way to "extrapolate or accentuate the human feelings through the entire look."
While the correlation between character and outfit wasn't always clear, the overall collection felt concise. David repeated fabrications, such as the crinkled natural wool suiting that opened the show; forcibly rumpled twice to retain its form, the material resembled cracked asphalt in gray and rice paper in white. David's desire to craft a narrative does not override his knack for divining the best use of his innovative fabrics—a paraffin-coated lyocell rayon became his dedicated parka material, whereas he reserved a cotton dévoré of "mutant daisies" (spotted earlier this week in his women's Resort collection) for the dressier grouping. Shorts and wide-leg cropped pants directed focus downward to leather storm welt lace-ups made in Northampton. This devoted sneaker enthusiast doing proper shoes proved the strongest statement of all, as if David had matured his label even while holding tight to fun pieces like a laminated terry sweatshirt and a cartoonish jumpsuit in ripstop cotton.
The mask corresponding to the final model, dressed in an all-white corduroy jumpsuit, no longer featured a face, only a checkerboard of passementerie. David joked that for a second he considered modeling the look himself and no one would have noticed. That's when it became clear that the masks might have been a leveling device all along: They neutralized the person to play up the clothes.
