Veronique Branquinho Fall-Winter 2017
(Main image: NowFashion. Full pictures pending)
For Fall-Winter 2017, Veronique Branquinho saw to it that a man’s left-hand twill suit from 1943 was at the very center of the season’s collection.
She deconstructed — and reconstructed — the bare bones of what makes a suit, to reinvent it in a range I haven’t seen before. The first look was a seemingly traditional vest and jacket, with the subtraction of long pant legs — replaced by bermudas, no less. Being a fall collection, she added thick white stockings: the kind as little girls we were forced to wear to church on Easter Sunday.
She deconstructed what makes a suit.
Fables of the Deconstruction
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There were blazers redesigned to a cape and poncho, which really grapples with the reinvention question. A pant is a pant, and you can only change so much. But to reinvent the standard garments a woman wears is the difficult task every designer faces season after season. In that respect, the designer succeeded. She even took the same suiting fabric and deviated into overalls and an accordion skirt.
Something I have seen at many of the shows this week (including AALTO and Ingie Paris) is massive, voluminous sleeves. Here we see them with sleeve garters, to give them extra texture and character, and in a nod to 19th century men’s fashion.
The borderline morose facial expressions some models wore reassured me of the zombie-like, drab, punk schoolgirl vibe the clothes were intended to convey, as with the cowlicked hair we saw with Yohji Yamamoto last season.
There was a massive presence of Swarovski rhinestones, stuck overtop sheer shirts, that recalled a ballroom dancer’s costume. It gave a crazy, incomprehensible contrast to the borderline boyish punk/Victorian message everything else was suited up to convey.
In spite of some mixed messages, one standout corduroy oxblood suit in particular kicked ass and took names, showing that although deconstruction is in Branquinho’s vocabulary, construction is at the core of her talent.
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With love,
FWO
