“I’m Doing My Best to Fit in Without Compromise”—Why Marine Serre Is a Force of Fashion
You might believe that the late Karl Lagerfeld said it best about Marine Serre, one of the designers speaking at this year’s Forces of Fashion conference in New York City in October: “One-meter-fifty, but a will of steel.” Yet Serre is no slouch when it comes to speaking out about herself, the industry, and the need for creativity to fight for sustainability, inclusivity, community, and visibility.
Serre appeared on the scene in 2017 and in the space of only a few months, was shortlisted for the Hyères International Festival for emerging designers, the ANDAM fashion prize, and the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, which she won. Nicolas Ghesquière has said of her walking off with the prize: “It was the way she represents dressing today: the sports clothes, the body consciousness, and a kind of romanticism and femininity. It really speaks of [this] generation.”
Let’s add to that the way Serre appeared fully formed as a designer, already firing on all cylinders with a look that was unmistakably hers from the get-go: A beautiful, jarring, and sometimes unsettling mix of logo’d bodysuits (often eerily covering the face), moire taffeta tailoring, upcycled scarf dresses, and spherical bags. The deep political and cultural seams she has mined have proved she’s unflinching in gazing at the world and works to reflect the reality of where we are today, and how things could be better, back into her designs.
Fashion is sometimes guilty of sidestepping the bigger, thornier questions of life. Not Serre. She even has a few answers, too. Here, five reasons why she is a force to be reckoned with.
She is all about fighting the fear
“I’m doing my best to fit in without compromise. I want to be radically open and never get stuck in a set brand identity. A year ago I was in school and couldn’t even pay for my apartment. But I’m not scared, because I have nothing to lose.”
She has to be the change
“I think we need to be a little aggressive in a way, because things are so stuck. If you keep doing things the same way, nothing will change. The biggest challenge for a young designer now is learning to take care of yourself so you can be sharper, because we have to be as quick as the big houses.”
She believes sustainability should be a given
“I don’t want to confuse Marine Serre with a brand that wants to make money by doing ‘green’ stuff. Everyone should be caring about that already, because otherwise fashion is going to die anyway.”
She trained as a tennis player, and it has taught her well
“There is a certain discipline in sport, of repetition and repetition until you have a certain perfection, that is very similar to fashion design. When I started fashion design full-time, I refocused the same energy that I [put] into countless hours of tennis training each week into creating the best products I could.”
She thinks the doors of the industry need to be blown wide open
“That’s the whole idea; to stop that everything has to be secret in fashion! We need to make things accessible. When you buy something, you want it to touch you and make you happy. That’s what all of us here are working for.”
Marine Serre is a speaker at Vogue’s 2019 Forces of Fashion conference, October 10 and 11 in New York City; learn more and buy tickets here.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
