Backstage in a lower hall of Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, Sébastien Meunier—artistic director of Ann Demeulemeester—spoke simply and eloquently of the thinking behind his Fall show. “Fashion is like rock music. There is no rock music without rebellion.”
He furthered that by citing the period, and youth-driven fervor, around the emergence of the Antwerp Six circa the early 1980s (Demeulemeester was one of them). “The time was full of super-activity, and it was a bit anarchic,” said Meunier. “I went for something that had this energy, a big mix, more rock, and less romantic, than what I’ve done before.”
It was indeed a more texturally and chromatically varied Ann Demeulemeester show than what’s become expected of the house. Though, in that, the collection did not sacrifice the label’s signature . . . let’s call it louche nostalgia. Velvety elongated shirts, in ruby or emerald, flowed with an after-hours sense of go-with-it ease, likewise bathrobe-silhouette tops and coats. One notable mini-series was a group of cobweb-knit sweaters, again giving off a tone of freewheeling, thrown-on and nonconforming expressiveness. Floral jacquards, shearling, bandanas, and fur accents rounded the “big mix” Meunier was aiming for, and all together, as strobe lights flashed and Siouxsie and the Banshees pumped through the sound system, one felt that rock ’n’ roll feedback.
An important point of observation, beyond the clothes: It would have been heartening to see a cast with more people of color.
