Courreges X Harley Weir, HerSelf 2020
With a woman at its head, Courreges finds its place within an industry questioning its own gender politics and history of exploitation. With that in mind we launch our Spring Summer 2020 collection with HerSelf: a pre-campaign without models.
In Courreges creative director Yolanda Zobel’s second collaboration with the artist and photographer Harley Weir, it appeared there is no reason to project the idea of the ‘Courreges woman’ on an imaginary person — Zobel and Weir themselves are the ‘Courreges woman.’
The first campaign of its kind, clothes were sent to Harley’s London home where she posed and photographed herself, at times taking selfies with her phone in front of a mirror, at other times editing pictures through a live feed to her laptop while posing in her bedroom, kitchen and back garden.
The intimate and deeply personal images communicate in the most literal way the idea of self-determination. The core value of the Courreges woman today and any world in which the future is female.
The collection’s non constricting refinement creates an optimistic uniform, the iconic double wool is cut in bias dresses, belted loose fitted coats and cropped jackets.
Orange and flashes of light green animate more neutral tones like deep brown, khaki, beige and bright white.
Joyful cutaway shirts are cut in crisp white cotton poplin. Towelling separates are warm and cheering for the body and the mind.
Denim and cotton tricotine sleeves can pop on and off with covered press buttons and a lively vichy logo print animates cotton, double wool, hats and bags.
Curvaceous details are infused in collectable wardrobe pieces in satin viscose and jacquard second skin garments.
Leathers are embossed, playful knits iconically ribbed, and wool tricotine along with appliqué vinyl perpetuating the fin du plastique narrative.
The House of Courreges has always been about the future — but the future isn’t what it used to be. As we fashion the future from the year 2019 we are focused not only on new forms, but new social relations. All those things which the project of modernism ignored: in its programs of production it took for granted reproduction — the material basis of life in nature — and the literal reproduction of the species and the daily care and love that makes human life possible. In short — women’s work. Taken for granted as a part of nature and unpaid, it is a debt that now hangs over us all.