Fall / Winter 2021 Collection
Side-C Vol.6 DOUBLE-END.
The world has turned upside down.
We’ve all been stuck in our homes, by ourselves,
looking in the mirror to probably find another self, while still being who we are.
What was normal, no longer is.
What felt possible is now impossible. And yet also, what felt impossible is now possible.
What if clothing has turned upside down, too?
What if there is a way to use pieces in both ways, like a double-ended marker pen?
What if we can flip clothes upside down like looking at them in a double end mirror?
Side C, the transformative look at classics that focuses on innovative pattern making
in order to offer multiple ways to wear and interpret garments,
finds a further new dimension: a vertical one, in which top and bottom can be both used,
switching from one shape to the other in the flip of the axis.
By working simultaneously on construction and deconstruction,
items turn 90°, 180°, 270° to form new silhouettes and shapes that can be used both ways.
Function stays, shape mutates.
A cape becomes a fishtail dress. A down ruffled dress turns into a down opera coat.
A map appears on a coat: an indispensable aid to navigate a world turned unfamiliar.
Air force jackets become navy ones. Check patterns have up and down directions.
A Gustave Verbeek drawing on a knit sweater has fish swimming against gravity.
Wisteria and willow flower motifs migrate from summer to winter.
Masculine and feminine collide. Hats can be flipped, too.
Volumes are flowing, liquid and endlessly reconfigured, both ways.
Nods at 50s couture signify optimism,
imbued with the will to offer a new point of view on classic garments.
In the accompanying movie,
the screen is split, like the model was looking at herself in the mirror.
What happens on one side is the reverse of what happens on the other:
the same clothes and the same model are different,
yet the same, in an escalation of outward theatricality.
Looking at things upside down, and downside up, to find a new perspective and a new balance.
#DOUBLE-END
#bpFW21
