Ludovic de Saint-Sernin show at New York Fashion Week, February 11, 2024 (Charly TRIBALLEAU)
Tulips are delicately outlined on transparent tops: for his first fashion show in New York, Parisian designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin paid homage to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, queer icon, to his photos of flowers and his nudes.
“Robert (Mapplethorpe) has always been my hero (…) He’s even the reason why I launched the brand. Read +Just Kids+ by Patti Smith (in which the singer describes their relationship, editor’s note) has changed my life”, underlined, just after the show, the designer who made a name for himself by promoting queer fashion, where sex is often mentioned.
Iconic photographer of the New York gay scene, who caused a scandal for his explicitly sexual images, died of AIDS at the age of 42, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) left a rich artistic legacy which lived on Sunday evening on the Fashion Week podium.
First there were these highly stylized tulips, which Robert Mapplethorpe photographed in black and white, and which appeared in velvet on delicate, diaphanous Japanese organdy tops. The pattern also returned on mini-skirts and equally transparent dresses.
The show then evolved towards more strict suits, worn for men or women, evoking the New York of the 1970s and 1980s, then increasingly evocative evening wear, like this low-cut and very short red trench coat.
In a refined setting, on the 18th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, a man walks on the podium, in a black leather jumpsuit revealing his torso. Then another male body parades almost entirely naked, except for boots, black leather briefs with eyelets and a leather hood whose laces cross the face, seeming to echo the BDSM world (bondage, domination , submission, sado-masochism) documented by Robert Mapplethorpe.
“I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just the photos (…) but also the people in those photos who came out of the frame and onto the catwalk,” explains the designer, who worked with the Mapplethorpe Foundation for this fall-winter 2024 collection.
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“It’s also an exploration of the self. The fashion show begins with something very pure and minimal, and continues with an exploration of sex,” adds Ludovic de Saint Sernin.
Used to showing in Paris, the designer, who launched his brand in 2017, sees New York, “cradle of contemporary queer culture”, as a source of inspiration. The United States also represents the brand’s most important market, with a third of its sales.
“It’s here that I see the most people wearing my clothes, in the streets, in the clubs,” adds the designer, who still defines himself as “a child of Paris.”
arb/jnd
2024-02-12 05:49:25
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