How do you follow up guest-designing a Louis Vuitton men’s collection and a fashion spectacle that included a performance by hit Spanish singer Rosalía?
When you’re Colm Dillane, you invite 1,500 of your closest friends and fashion denizens — plus anyone who sees your wild postering campaign — to KidSuper’s fall show.
Needless to say, the scrum outside the Casino de Paris music hall was epic — and hardly as fun as his “Funny Business” show, hosted by Tyra Banks, with she and the guest comedians wearing looks from the fall collection.
“Look at this turnout, I guess it’s all the people who couldn’t get into the Louis Vuitton show,” cracked “one-man verbal assault unit” Jeff Ross, dressed in a look he described as perfect for a fishing trip with Elton John.
The 20-or-so outfits in KidSuper’s fall collection were as bold and unapologetic as ever, and a touch more legible. Reining back the exuberance of his prints and embellishments let his sharp eye for construction stand out further, adding fuel to the speculative fire that he may snag the plum Vuitton men’s job.
Dillane showed that he cut a suit as mean as some of the jokes, like the lilac one with a satin edge sported by Emmy-nominated actress Yvonne Orji and those in burgundy corduroy worn by him and the ushers, embroidered with the Casino de Paris’ facade.
The painterly “kissing” coat and matching trousers that Andrew Santino said made him look like he was moonlighting as an art dealer and the blue puffer version of the same design worn by J Balvin also hit the spot.
Showing on non-models was his way of projecting his designs on the “normal people” who wear them. Onstage, the acts certainly looked every bit the “confident bodies” Dillane described when he later joked that he’d done “a lot for body positivity.”
The evening itself made a case for fashion as attitude as much as desirable product, from the moment Banks introduced herself as “Tee-ra Bon-ksss,” the way French people pronounce her name.
Hilarity ensued over the next hour for an audience that included Dillane’s parents, Westside Gunn, “Emily in Paris” star Lucien Laviscount as well as Kodak Black and his date of the week, one-year-old daughter Queen Yuri Kapri.
No holds were barred to those onstage, least of all Dillane himself, who was ribbed about everything from his sanity and manhood to his association with Louis Vuitton.
France’s passion for butter, Balenciaga’s advertising controversy, Kanye West, Alexander Wang and French first lady Brigitte Macron were among those skewered by Banks, Ross, Balvin, Orji, Santino, French comedian Fary, Matteo Lane, Louisiana-based Theo Von and Baltimore’s Stavros Halkias. Most of the jokes were too ribald and borderline libelous to reprint here.
But there were sweet moments amid the salty humor. New York-based Andrew Schultz reminded the audience of Dillane’s start as a scrappy entrepreneur selling T-shirts to those queuing outside the Louis Vuitton flagship.
“Now he sells his shirts inside the store. As [Dillane] would say, anything is possible,” Schultz concluded.
“Knock, knock,” Dillane asked just before the curtain closed. When the room asked who was there, he replied “the new brand in town.”
And then he dropped the mic.
