Concept is wed to autobiography in Ann-Sofie Back’s work. This is most definitely the case with Back’s Spring 2018 collection, titled It’s a Match, in which her fantasies of wild office parties and prom dates comingle with her real-life experience of online dating. The designer’s adventures in e-love were inadvertently kick-started when she discovered that an intern of hers was on the same app. Back herself is shy when meeting people face-to-face, but she knew she’d excel on the platform because, as she says, “I’m kind of rude and quick with words.”
Designed in the midst of a budding romance and a business slump, the collection “is partly about Tinder and dating and [partly about] the collapsing fashion system,” Back explains. “I took the inspiration of Wall Street and the corporate office look—The Wolf of Wall Street and American Psycho—[and mixed it with] oversexualized prom-date princess.” That translated into Prince of Wales checks worked into off-kilter suiting, including a broad-shouldered blazer-cum-bodysuit and a stirrup jumpsuit, as well as a breast-baring corset and an asymmetric shirtdress with what Back cleverly described as a “drunk buttoning collar.”
The images here are being released as the clothes hit stores. Back recruited six women with whom she feels a kinship to wear the designs—singers Sarah Assbring (El Perro Del Mar) and Nadia Tehran, twins Caro and Adele, and artists Ania Chorabik and Arvida Byström. The timely shoot captures the spirit of the collection, but it doesn’t do it justice. Back is an expert at both “come-on” clothes, as she puts it, and “death of sex” looks, and she has been experimenting with asymmetry and proportion for decades. This lineup contains pieces that rival those generating buzz on the international scene.
