Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Boloria
Fashion seems to be having a curious Belgian moment. Today, Matthieu Blazy had subtle Belgian touches in his Chanel couture show — my review will be published tomorrow — and there’s lots of attention around the auction of Martin Margiela’s private archive, which happens on July 9.
And then there’s Olivier Theyskens’s men’s and women’s designs for a new label called Boloria, which is based in Antwerp. Several times he mentioned a Belgian milieu for the clothes, both rural and urban. What does that mean, exactly? A mixture of romance and gloominess, a nice civilized restraint. “There is a certain bourgeoisie that is very different from the French bourgeoisie,” the designer, now 49, who lives in both Paris and Antwerp, said.
Theyskens’s career has had a number of chapters. He was creative director of Rochas, followed by Nina Ricci and Theory. More recently he has been doing his own line of custom clothes, often involving remarkable patchworks of fabric. Two years ago, he was hired by the brothers Manu and Michiel Beers, founders of Tomorrowland, a techno-music festival, to create a fashion brand, which they named Boloria after a butterfly species. The other day, for the first time in awhile, Theyskens returned to the Paris runway with his new gig.
The big, full-skirted dresses that opened the show might give some with long memories the impression that Theyskens was stuck in the past. But, for him, the scale of the dresses made them allegories of space and time. He seems pretty obsessed with historical time — the stuff we remember, how decades flow together, how clothing was more anonymous looking in the past. I think he captured that feeling extremely well in this concise debut. He said, “I always figured these looks were about to leave their apartment, but that it will be very unsure — are they in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s, the ’70s?”
From left: Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of BoloriaPhoto: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Boloria
From top: Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of BoloriaPhoto: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Boloria
That time blur came across best in the tailoring, the relaxed and often rumpled effect of the men’s suits, which included waistcoats and pant legs styled to look hastily stuffed into socks and the waistbands of underwear exposed. Theyskens manages to make his stone colors look particular. Although the collection included a trio of beautifully spartan women’s suits — slim, below-the-knee skirts, cropped jackets over delicate tops (basically T-shirts) — and Theyskens’s favorite moody long dresses, the winners in this show were the men’s clothes. “I cannot explain enough how important it was to me to do men’s,” he said. “I really loved it.” The affection and curiosity showed.
From left: Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of BoloriaPhoto: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Boloria
From top: Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of BoloriaPhoto: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Boloria