Spring Summer 2024 Menswear
Deultum
00162024
Art as a stage, life as a stage. Kiko Kostadinov ponders the meta-fictional conceits of film and fashion as architectures for storytelling with and on the male body. Clothes about characters, and clothes about clothes.
The Spring Summer 2024 collection is tempered by the imperfect beauty of our quotidian, where cultures, roles and occasions intersperse. The spatial works of the conceptual artist Tom Burr (American, b. 1963) return as a dual reference: Informing the fashion show at the Lycée Henri IV — re-contextualised as a liminal space between archive, backstage and front-of-house — and appearing in the tacked, pleated and disrupted surfaces of the collection itself.
A confluence of colours, costumes, and vignettes of youth and young manhood from the Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italian, 1922-75) short film La Ricotta (1962) continue an irreverent study of formality in disarray, informing the collection’s palette, running order, and bursts of nocturnal elegance.
Functional tabs and epaulettes, flat pleats and hand-rolled raw jersey appliqués are all devices crucial to the season’s garment construction, in a season where the subtle tonalities of greys, browns and greens are shot through with cadmium yellow, cobalt blue, rose, lilac and carmine. Fabrications fluctuate through matte and shine, from ultra-light shirting cottons and bonded jersey through to lurex metallics, hammered satin, iridescent wool and diamond jacquard.
Bulgarian star and flower embroideries, ruffled gazar collars, ornamental buttons and satin tuxedo stripes add moments of frivolity to the rigorous structure of bold jackets and coats with a 1980’s flair. Gilet jumpsuits, belted milano knit robe coats and zip jersey tunics express the sensual tension between the dressed and undressed. Hybrid shirts and shirt jackets feature knotted jersey side panels, double collars and multi-button configurations for interpretation and play. Contrast striped K-kable knitwear creates a graphic layered effect between gilets, cardigans and thin scarves, as fine K-shaped pattern work traces kinetic trouser shapes, pleated tanks and t-shirts. On foot, the wave-soled Tonkin boot returns as a massive sandal, joined by new flat slip-ons in crinkled leather.
