Martine Rose is providing the fits for our Monday morning. Inspired by the surreal nature of the empty offices and shifted work dynamic that the pandemic prescribed, Martine Rose’s AW22 collection aims to reflect the dissolving binaries between work and home, exercise and rest, sleeping and working – by blurring the traditional fabric attribution this season.
Reworking last season’s concept of suiting fabric in a sports context into a new, fluorescent pink suit made of shellsuit fabric, the brand is using its past collections to inform its future: re-energising concepts, designs and motifs to craft something unique. Elsewhere, dead stock vintage fabric is used in mesh underwear, emphasising the brand’s renewed focus on sustainability by using now-discontinued, small-batch fabric in its new collection.
Poking fun at the rigid binaries of ‘workwear’, Rose champions her clothes as being “proudly, happily and totally unprofessional” – a concept which we see worked into unstructured and draped silhouettes, layered styling reminiscent of childhood over-dressing, and lilac florals which scream Grandma-chic.
Perhaps nodding to ERL’s thrifted bedspread-turned-A$AP-Rocky-approved cape, Martine Rose also looks to the realm of sleep, dreaming and ‘bedwear’, with prints and fabrics inspired by bed covers and bedsheets, and a signature dressing-gown-esque silhouette throughout.
Fabrics are intentionally crinkled – said to replicate the clothes strewn across the floor in a pre-interview panic – and graphics are cracked, misplaced and broken to disrupt any facade of perfection. Here, Rose also looks to our new reality which hinges on a minimal structure and blurred time boundaries. Clothes are made to look worn, with puffa’s, shirts and tracksuits permanently crumpled.
Here, Martine Rose subverts the formality of “outfits”, creating full looks that can be pulled over the head as easily as a T-shirt. Dresses hang casually from the neck, and are layered over other garments. In the footwear department, she introduces a new silhouette: a round, bulb-toe, which contrasts with their classic chiselled loafers. For AW22, Martine Rose said Get Back To Work – but ditch the perfection.
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