Lucas Ossendrijver said: “To me this is such a strange season because so much is happening. And I really found the need to elevate. It’s not about streetwear or not streetwear, or do you like streetwear or do you not like streetwear? To me it’s about finding a new kind of elegance, a new kind of sophistication, and a new kind of language.”
This was the background to a Lanvin collection in which Ossendrijver used polarities between “night and day, soft and hard, and flat and 3-D”—plus a rewatch of Brian De Palma’s Body Double—to create a cyclone of forces in whose heart was a different kind of calm. The striped bias-cut V-neck knits towards the end; or the wearable-either-way T-shirt-fronted, shirt-backed overshirts; or the reversible bonded bicolor mackintoshes; or the evening tailcoats in black satin that were hybridized into fisherman-style utility vests of mesh and leather, were just a few of the garments which—while demanding ponderous description—had a concise logic to them on the eye. Fabrics overlapped from one garment to another, and menswear genres too. There was an inverted collarless workwear jacket with the stitched memories of the pockets form might have demanded it include above a pair of satin-looking evening trousers which featured very low-profile cargo pockets. A long patched check shirt came with a quiet ruffle-fronted detail and a pair of patent cherry loafers came with the molded sole of a technical sneaker, a category to which Ossendrijver has been so instrumental in its incorporation as a luxury fashion category. A couple of Cuban-collar shirts of beige silk featured delicate watercolor illustrations of eyes, birds, roses, animals, and fossils by a tattoo artist the designer had found on Instagram and asked to deliver some images based on the single-word brief of “encyclopedia.” This was a collection about classifications in menswear—and the tantalizing, unexplored spaces in between those old certainties. In truth this was a show whose speed and semidarkness did not best serve a collection that demanded time and trying on and visibility to properly appreciate. Even helter-skelter, however, you could see it was worth returning to at greater leisure.
Last words to Ossendrijver: “I always like this space between: not formal and not casual. Not boring and not a caricature. It’s in between, a space where things blend. In fashion I think luxury is a strange word nowadays. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. We have to elevate how we make clothes and discover how by changing that you can change fashion. And also intimacy and time and silence instead of screaming and being loud.”
