Jamaican-British menswear designer Martine Rose unveiled her eponymous Fall/Winter 2023 collection in Florence as a guest designer, finally highlighting the slightly bland 103rd edition of Pitti Uomo.
The show is located in the circular corridor of Piazza del Mercato Nuovo in the heart of Florence. The 16th-century building looks like Beijing's Silk Street by day, but Martine Rose unexpectedly turns it into a prism-wrapped discotheque. This place is very suitable for Martine Rose's show taste.
Models of striding meteors demonstrate new outfits that mix "Londoners and Italians".
In the pre-show media preview, Rose mentioned two words to describe how she combined the brand's London tone with Italian culture. "Italo Disco" (Italian dance music from 1980) and "Calcio Storico Fiorentino" (Florentine classical football, originating in Roman times and revived in Florence in the 16th century). These two images are consistent with the overall design landscape of Martine Rose over the past 15 years, while also demonstrating the brand's cultural respect as "an invited guest". Rose did put several local Calcio Storico athletes on the runway.
"Italo Disco", arose in 1980 with Italian dance music and "Calcio Storico Fiorentino", Florentine classical football, originated in Roman times and was revived in Florence in the 16th century.
Martine Rose Fall/Winter 2023 collection
The fringed coat and sports cotton coat embody Rose's dual British attributes, the former is a typical British menswear design; The latter is the designer's self-propelled background. The armor version of the oversized chunky knit, whether a long-sleeved sweater or a short-sleeved vest, is clearly deliberately shaped into an offensive state, and they echo the "Calcio Storico Fiorentino" along with the football jersey. A huge lamb wool jacket, a slim coat with a narrowed waist, a blazer with upturned shoulders... Martine Rose is the "shadow writer" of this "Balenciaga" silhouette.
It was Martine Rose's first show outside London. Even during London Fashion Week, she was always outside the mainstream system: from her daughter's school to a community climbing gym to a cul-de-sac in Camden, London... She has always been known for showing collections in unconventional spaces, many places that are not pleasant, remote and cluttered, but she has such a charm that industry leaders willingly rush to the top.
Just last season, the launch was staged under the railway arch in Vauxhall, London. This space was once home to a branch of the legendary gay sauna Chariots Spa. Although the show was held in a cave with a sticky, latex-stained floor, that didn't prevent then-Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke from sitting in the front row. At the end of 2021, after the tragic death of Virgil Abloh, rumors about Martine Rose becoming the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear department were rife and became one of the biggest gossip at fashion week at the time. Indeed, over the past decade, Martine Rose has become one of the most iconic black female designers.
Disruptive designs that reinvent perceptions, bold runways, subcultures borrowed, collaborations with Nihe, favorites by Drake, Justine Biber, Rihanna and others... Especially in the past five years, the fashion industry has gradually become familiar with Martine Rose's name, and it has only been discovered that from 2015 to 2017, she was a low-key menswear consultant for Balenciaga. Demna Gvasalia had already invited Rose to co-create Balenciaga's first menswear collection, so the oversized shoulder pads that would become the brand's signature design were naturally related to her.
Why is she so fascinating?
“I've Always Been Attracted to Outsiders”
"I'm always attracted to marginalized people."
Today, if we want to define "fashion", we must repeat it by consumerism and capital manipulation. That's why when Martine Rose says she's "not interested in fashion, just in clothing," everything becomes clear: clothing is a collection of social identities and cultural atmospheres, and it's interesting to see what each generation is attracted to, and for Rose, she is always interested in what people wear, why they wear it, and where they wear it.
In the 1980s and 90s, south London, where rave dancing and reggae culture were prevalent, combined with the exotic feelings of different ethnic residents, made it a melting pot of subcultures. In the city park Clapham Common, people open their doors, loudly play dance music, revelry, revelry, revelry, party after night. Martine Rose was born and raised in such circumstances. Her mother was a nurse and her father was an accountant, and when she was young, Rose wandered around with her sister, Michelle, who was more than a decade older than herself. A big fan of reggae music and lover rock, Michelle wore Katharine Hamnett, Jean-Paul Gaultier and a colorful Pam Hogg dress with fluffy sleeves, giving Martine Rose her first impression of the costume and her first opportunity to start her design career.
Through fashion design, Martine Rose looks back at her teenage life, when parties, crowds, and taboo places flowed into rebellious pieces like accompaniment to creation, continuing to provide options for the contemporary "misfit".
Since then, youth subcultures, city life, race and gender issues have been the story behind Martine Rose's designs. Through fashion design, she looks back at her teenage life, when parties, crowds, and forbidden places, like accompaniment to creation, flow into rebellious pieces that continue to provide options for the contemporary "misfit".
In the Spring/Summer 2022 collection, older men dance in shiny costumes reminiscent of Bob Fosse's videos. "Balding men are the protagonists of romance – I love it. I thought, isn't that interesting? We're used to seeing all kinds of people walking the catwalk, but we haven't seen balding older men, so I decided to put them in the middle, even at the beginning. ”
Martine Rose Spring/Summer 2022 collection
Interest in the club's nightlife and music scene naturally gives Rose's design a sense of sex. "When we're brainstorming in the studio, usually we ask, 'Would you have sex with someone wearing it?' It makes us sound like a very lecherous group, but that's what everyone wears for. "In the spring/summer 2023 collection, we see models tightly wrapped in fabric, and the silhouette of the garment is forced to pull, which is both a shaping and an expression of the desire to deform.
In addition to the design of her own brand, Rose and Nike also maintain this original intention in the joint cooperation. The Martine Rose x Nike Shox MR4 sneaker from the 2022 fire chose the Shox shoe type, as it was one of the most commonly worn shoes for underground music venues in London around 2000.
Martine Rose x Nike Shox MR4
Martine Rose x Nike Monarch
Seeing these underground, marginal, restless and fragile cultural elements being narrated again and again, I can't help but sigh that British designers are always the most individual. London has been a gathering place for different ethnic populations since the last century, so London is also the most abundant place for youth culture and subculture, sending Vivenne Westwood, Pam Hogg, Body Map, Christopher Nemeth and a series of brands born from underground. London Fashion Week is known for supporting emerging talent, and the atmosphere is very different from Paris, which focuses on elegant craftsmanship.
“As a designer I have a duty to reflect the times we're living in”
"The designer's accusation is to reflect our current times."
As Prada Fall/Winter 2017 women's advertising video says: "Fashion is about everyday life, and everyday life is a sign of the political point of personal freedom." "For fashion brands with global reach, it has become increasingly unrealistic not to take a stand in the face of hot events and political issues.
Martine Rose doesn't shy away from her desire to make her point of view through fashion design. If you don't embody something, what's the point of simply making clothes? The most emblematic is the "The Lost Lionesses Frustrated Lionesses" project launched with Nike in the summer of 2022, which explores the issue of equal rights.
In 1921, the FA Cup issued a mandatory ban on the provision of venues for women's football, and this unjust decree was not lifted until half a century later, in 1971. Rose created a series of T-shirts inspired by the event and filmed commercials in collaboration with real female footballers. Support women's football by sharing their stories and providing personalized "soccer uniforms".
Martine Rose x Nike “The Lost Lionesses”
There are also many reflections of the phenomenon of the times in the creation of the eponymous brand. The Fall/Winter 2022 collection, with men standing in offices dressed in a mix of bedspreads, denim and suits, satirizes the chaos and absurdity caused by work form home life in the years affected by the pandemic.
Looking back at the fashion scene in recent years, political views have never been absent, from the white T-shirt on Dior's spring/summer 2017 womenswear runway that reads "We should all be feminists" to Balenciaga's support for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders Gvasalia replaced its campaign logo with the words Balenciaga to embellished the upper of the Fall/Winter 2017 collection.
Is this a sincere voice? Or is it an overly rash answer to a serious question? Does it encourage the exchange of views between different positions? Or do you add shackles and force people to align with the "correct" standard? The discussion is inconclusive, but Martine Rose says she's more inclined to believe that the worst case scenario in fashion is that blind consumerism anesthetizes people's resistance to the world. In the face of all the problems, talking about it at least means that we are still thinking about it.
“I never wanted to feel like I was in a fashion sausage factory.”
"I never wanted to be part of a big fashion factory"
Before receiving Demna's invitation in 2015, Martine Rose's life and career were strained. She called Balenciaga her first formal job, a long journey from art school to fashion school at Middlesex University, almost entirely at her own expense. LMNOP, a T-shirt brand founded with Tamara Rothstein in the early years, also went through closure, and the eponymous brand Martine Rose once faced a lack of funds.
Although her three-year tenure at Balenciaga put Rose on the threshold of the fashion industry's top camp, she eventually chose to leave and return to the Tottenham area in north London to present her Fall/Winter 2017 collection, completing a beautiful return to herself.
Martine Rose Fall/Winter 2017 menswear collection, Martine Rose did not appear on the official London Men's Fashion Week calendar at the time, she hosted a comeback catwalk inspired by "bank clerks, office white-collar workers and bus drivers" in a Latino community in north London.
"Balenciaga's experience has given me a lot of confidence in myself. Previously, I didn't think I was qualified to ask people to come to the area and do a catwalk on a rainy weekend in such an environment. "It's not that Rose isn't ungrateful for the experience, but she knows she still wants a subcultural brand that makes the most eccentric work popular among a very small number of people." I never really wanted to be involved in a big thing," she said, "and anything mainstream, since I was a kid, didn't really appeal to me." ”
Martine Rose Spring/Summer 2023 collection
That being said, with the brand's return to London Fashion Sunday in 2022, former Louis Vuitton, former CEO of the runway, Tomorrow Ltd injected investment, and an ongoing co-branded collaboration with Nike... Martine Rose is actually moving closer to the center of the fashion industry. How do you maintain your interest and appeal to subcultures and geeks while working with fashion giants like Nike and well-known musicians like Drake? We'll see.
But it's also clear that Martine Rose will be herself for a while.
"I don't need more money, I don't want to sit at the top of a so-called empire. I'm happy that I can afford to pay for myself and my family, that I can truly have a good life, and I don't need more. ”
Just as in the face of the LVMH and ANDAM awards that were nominated but not won, her attitude was "it's reassuring", and it was like when Givenchy parted ways with then-creative director Clare Waight Keller, and when the industry media predicted that Martine Rose would be the next at the helm, she also said, "I don't need more money, I don't want to sit at the top of a so-called empire." I'm happy that I can afford to pay for myself and my family, that I can truly have a good life, and I don't need more. ”
Counting Martine Rose's personal characteristics, whether you have the same name as me, you can't help but think of some similar names: Martin Margiela, who also held a show in the school playground, and Raf Simons, who was fascinated by fashion design after watching that show and later became the god of youth culture; And Alexander McQueen, who is also full of rebellious spirit, loves subcultures, and has spent several years of unhappy time because he went to Givenchy...
One design star after another has risen in the galaxy that is not very long in the history of modern fashion, and in the end, those without capital intervention have gradually fallen, and those who have grown rapidly due to the blessing of capital are no longer the original intention of the founder himself. The subculture and Gen Z gradually lost their original meaning, and the essence was easily appropriated and reduced to a marketing password; Social platform algorithms incubate more superficial imitators; Capital's greed for growth has never stopped, and under such an ecology, can Martine Rose, who aspires to be loyal to the underground and insist on the spirit of independent operation, be an outsider forever?
We certainly want to see the victory of the rebel heroes, but that is also not a criterion for any kidnapping of geniuses. After all, brands inspired by outsiders will always live and die, but outsider cultures will live forever.