The subject of ‘everyday dressing’ is a theme running through this entire season—part of a fashion zeitgeist that has designers challenged to find a useful relevance for clothes in extreme times. Julien Dossena is one of those who’s come back to reality, with a casual-cool collection popping with tons of separates.
“I was craving just to do clothes. Maybe because of the climate of the world,” he said.
So instead of another off-world Rabanne fantasia, this season he’d been inspired by looking “at how girls are dressed when I see them walking around Paris, and on the meteo coming to work every day,” he said. “I was really interested in just observing people. It’s a sort of collage of stuff, mixing everything together; a personal kind of intimacy with what makes people most individual.” The pick-and-mix of it, layers upon layers of cardigans, sweaters, miniskirts, shirts, jackets, trousers, and biker overalls, was an object lesson in how to make a zillion clashing patterns work together as if you haven’t tried too hard.
Dossena also said he’d been inspired by the work of Amy Arbus, who shot her On The Street column for The Village Voice in downtown New York in the early 1980s. It was a time when kids were throwing together vintage tweed coats and glitzy thrifted relics. He caught that feeling and attitude—piling on leopard spot, ’70s-‘30s lurex Deco knitwear, recoloring signature Rabanne chainmail as a kind of Argyle, dotting tights with crystal sparkles. The result ran everything together from chunky, useful coat-jackets to floral boho dresses. This was realistic-Rabanne, happily putting the fun into functional dressing.