Germanier RTW Spring 2023
Kevin Germanier took his slot on the penultimate day of a busy, buzzy week as a cue for his spring collection.
“It’s the end of the fashion month; everyone is tired so there’s no point offering a snooze fest,” he said backstage, right before sending out an explosion of feathers, foil and beads.
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The Paris-based designer also wanted to show upcycling as a lifestyle, adding seats reworked with lengths of colorful fabric or covered in beads for his front row guests — they were all already sold to collectors.
His show opened with shirts and trousers that had been sliced up, reassembled and coated in his glittery silicone treatment on raw edges. Not your parents’ officewear for sure, but if you’re in the market for your next Burning Man look, this is probably a good start.
What followed can only be described as a riot of colors and textures. Beads by the bushelful and long rectangular sequins — this season’s take on feathers — looked thrown on several models but had been painstakingly attached. The lot spoke of handcraft and OTT joy.
Congruent with his desire to lessen waste and be more ethical in his creative process, Germanier worked with Brazilian artist Gustavo Silvestre to provide a decent livelihood to prisoners and members of the LGBTQ community by hiring them to execute his macramé dresses, peppered with tiny toys, beads and the leftover foil from Carnival season.
Dismissing Germanier as a stage-only kind of brand out of hand would not be fair, but his runway makes it hard to imagine the range of energetic but realist ready-to-wear pieces he offers for more commercial purposes. Still, the show had people sitting up in their beaded seats.
Launch Gallery: Germanier RTW Spring 2023
