There are some seasons when you get the impression that everyone is singing from the same songbook. Such was the case this time around with Christian Wijnants, a very talented designer who seemed to want to push out of his comfort zone in several ways. In doing so, he ticked a lot of Fall’s trend boxes: oversize men’s suits, tartans, slouchy tailoring, checked overcoats, multilayered jackets, et cetera. Some of these were quite pretty, but it didn’t exactly feel like he was at ease.
Wijnants has been quietly building his business for 16 years, to the point where he can now step things up a notch in terms of venue and capacity. This season, for the first time, he showed in the gilded 18th-century Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild. It’s hard to get grander.
“With a location like this, I wanted the girls to be a little tougher—edgy and masculine,” the designer said during the countdown to his show. “I like what’s happening out there with androgynous looks, and I thought it would be nice to have a romantic collection with a tougher-looking girl. It adds a bit of mystery to the idea of nostalgia and lost memories.” He also added in a soundtrack commentary, pulled from horror movies—a throwback to his teenage years.
Hewing masculine might have been a little too far out of Wijnants’s zone, inspiration-wise. If women—and there are legions of them—love Wijnants, it is because he has a flair for color and hand-prints, and above all a certain kind of reassuring, romantic-but-not-frilly aesthetic. Sure, he proved he can handle a collage moment in fashion better than many, delivering cable-knit/striped/floral/color-blocked numbers that require no effort to project into real life. A woman could wear those without looking kooky. His base will probably also thrill to the hand-painted prints, particularly on a bronze overcoat. Wijnants has the guts to go his own way, and he’s generally at his best when he’s not chasing a trend.
