Doublet’s AW25 show, titled ‘Villain,’ fittingly began in the dark, when a rain soundscape and ominous footsteps echoed throughout Paris’s Faculté de Pharmacie. Then came the music: an intense combination of house and heavy metal, interspersed with something that sounded like shots being fired in a video game.
The collection was similarly dark: black leather pieces were strewn in buckles and chains, a snake figurine hung from a black hood, and models wore clownish bowling shoes or brogues adorned with razor-sharp spikes. The hair and makeup were similarly gothic: models’ faces were painted white; their lips coated in black, purple, or deep red.
And this season, the Japanese streetwear brand proved that it has teeth: fluffy jumpers featured cutouts of monster’s mouths (nothing screams villain like bared fangs). Meanwhile, in nod to the brand’s motto “strangest comfort”, one model sauntered down the runway, wrist bedecked in chains, clutching a black hot water bottle (TBF, it was cold in Paris today).
But the show’s villain theme also revealed itself via more subtle iterations: one T-shirt read “I heart me,” a tongue-in-cheek nod to the solipsism intrinsic to the “I’m in my villain era” internet discourse.
But the show’s defining moment was undoubtably the jarring dissonance spurred by a dead-behind-the-eyes, Patrick Batemen-esque model who swaggered down the catwalk in a pink dressing gown, which some fashion sleuths have theorised is a reference to the costumes on the sitcom AP Bio.
All in all, the show was a spectacle laden with viral moments: whether the collection’s clothes measured up to its atmosphere, however, is up for debate.
All featured images via @hakansolak.online ©
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