As we emerge blinking into the light of a new life after the last year-plus, a question arises, hardly the most urgent one, but still: What will you want to buy to wear? Something spanking new and boxfresh, a symbol of luxury and status, a little materialistic pat on the back for having made it through to the other side? Or something which feels almost achingly romantic in expression and execution, a piece that might stand the test of time once the luster of totemic gloss fades, as it all too inevitably does? (I know, I know: there are other options out there, but come on, people: dramatic contrast!)
Standing in designer Chris Peters’s apartment on New York’s Lower East Side in front of two racks of his “new” CDLM pieces—the use of those inverted commas will soon become apparent—the mind (and maybe more importantly, the heart) can’t help but go to the romantic option. Peters came to prominence as part of the dormant (for now) duo Creatures of the Wind; his other half in life and creative endeavor Shane Gabier is currently busying himself with terrific ceramics and consulting on furniture design. This is Peters’s fourth collection. He’s calling it resort, because, you know, you’ve got to classify it somehow. Though that takes us back to another classification: The majority of this collection is new in creativity only; many, many of its pieces are old, and have been upcycled, transformed, reworked, and repurposed, giving remnants of the past a relevance for the present.
“All my consultancies, everything, [we] lost our entire income,” says Peters of his pandemic life experience. “So, I was like, "What am I going to do?" And I thought, "Well, I can kind of make clothes by myself.” What we have here is fashion as an expression of making, of inventing, of crafting. It neatly segues into the way we’re all busy reevaluating our needs and desires about what we want, and how much we own. It’s inspiring, this sense of a personal urgency to just do—and the results transcend the prosaic idea of being simply clothes to become souvenirs of things which have lasted, and get the benefit of a second life.
For Peters, that means re-tailoring a tux jacket which still bears the name of its Hungarian maker with a Frankenstein-like piecing together of old Levi’s (super cool, btw), accessorized with old ostrich feathers turned into a stole; “a more honest idea of dressing up” is how Peters describes it. There’s a black slipper satin dress scissored away to reveal an ivory silk bias skirt, its hem a cloud of gray dip-dyed in Japan. There are old white cotton drill lab coats scrawled with floral motifs and paneled with brocade, or ’40s cotton dresses that he buried, Hussein Chalayan style, and aged to some poetic place of distress, flecked with rust perhaps, but still compellingly beautiful.
That’s not to say there’s nothing new-new. The most luxe-y luxe cargo pants ever, made from old bolts of washed Taroni gazar. Terrific bags crocheted by a women’s collective in the Yucatan, and which look like girdles from the ’30s. Or, a recurring theme here, a reevaluation of how clothes can be held to the body, with tubular lengths of sheer fabric becoming cummerbunds to wear like second skins over clothes, or a sweatshirt that can also be worn as a sarong, its sleeves knotting at the waist.
Perhaps most beguiling: His charmingly odd (a good thing) way with adornment. The wraith-like floral chokers, their fastenings trailing down the body, or a series of little beaded panels that can be tied over whatever you’re wearing. Peters did the handwork for those himself, as much L.E.S.age as they are Lesage. He’s now busy grappling with where next from here: Back to making more quote-unquote commercial collections, he’s thinking. That’s likely a good idea. And yet, as his CDLM resort so persuasively reminds me, there’s no need to give up on the past when you’re moving on into the future.
