Boramy Viguier has once again decided to show his new collection via the medium of video. His last two short films had a fantastic (and fantastical) mythological/futuristic vibe, distorting reality with a wink-wink to gamer-dom. For spring 2022, he decided to take a simpler approach. Viguier’s models run in the darkness of cyberspace, moving away from some undefined fantasia of a place while heading toward an equally indefinable location.
The video’s central conceit, Viguier said via Zoom the other day, is that for all of the movement, his models are essentially running on the spot: Where they’ve left, where they’re going, they never get further or closer. Given our collective experience of recent times, how existence has been essentially a sprint while remaining moored in place, you don’t have to look too far for the allegory to our lives.
Yet despite that weightiness, Viguier’s own creativity has clearly not been stuck. He continues to push forward with that idiosyncratic and original fusion of the time-honored tenets of tailored construction and then blows them up by combining them with the design language of athleticwear. It’s where longer-length blazers can nestle under fishtail parkas in optic white or a rich, ornate jacquard woven with a dragon motif. That same lush fabric is also used for the likes of high-collar sporty blousons or short-sleeve shirts, worn fastened all the way up to the neck and partnered with cargo pants.
It’s a shimmering, beguiling, essentially optimistic, and joyful statement, confidently navigating a route between decoration and functionality. It also establishes him as a terrific colorist, using gorgeous shades of pink, lilac, scarlet, emerald green, and sky blue, shown to good effect on his djellaba-like tunic shirting. Underscoring his particularly kinetic brand of inventiveness, Viguier has collaborated with Vibram, creating a hiking shoe with the latter’s trek soles; the uppers, meanwhile, are pure Boramy Viguier, riffing on the Japanese art of furoshiki, a folding and knotting of fabric used to wrap gifts.
One other idea that Viguier employed for the video: a slo-mo effect where we can see all the richness of detail he has added to the looks—driving gloves; techno-ish versions of cummerbunds; ties with almost every look; and oftentimes ties paired with delicate, almost feminine chokers. The ties are crucial to the collection, Viguier said. “They’re one of the greatest pieces,” he explained, “one of the most luxurious things in a man’s wardrobe and the most complex to make. Worn with the garments...the look becomes chic, almost Victorian—calculated finesse.”
Incidentally, those ties are all vintage. He sourced about 150 of them for the collection, giving them a second life. It underscores his ongoing commitment to using deadstock fabrics (50% with this collection) or whatever he can find within walking distance from his Paris studio. “I don’t know if in the end that’s going to be good for the planet,” Viguier said, “but I do know it’s good for creativity.”
