Nowadays major fashion brands have the power to manufacture all sorts of things, from Haute Couture gowns to skateboards, from beauty products to stationery. But - you could argue - so do independent labels. In fact, quite often small labels come up with more original and stylish ideas than big corporations, a perfect example is French menswear brand Études.
Launched by creative duo artist Aurélien Arbet (based in New York) and graphic designer Jérémie Egry (based in Paris) as Hixsept, the label first worked on a basic wardrobe comprising shirts and blazers, before reinventing itself in 2012 as Études, a sort of umbrella name under which the duo reunites all the collaborative projects they work upon.
Apart from developing their fashion collections, Arbet and Egry have indeed focused together on photography books and graphic design works. Rather than just going to fashion weeks, they seem interested in visiting book events such as the New York Art Book Fair and Offprint in Paris, and have released a series of books by contemporary photographers that started with Danish Nicolai Howalt, American Daniel Everett, and French Nicolas Hosteing. The series forms the Blue Book Collection, comprising volumes characterised by the same format and same number of pages, but with highly different content.
Cross-collaboration and travelling are keys to the projects of the duo as Arbet and Egry are based in different countries. Moving and travelling where actually also among the themes of the duo's Autumn/Winter 2015-16 collection.
The collection featured digitally printed images of urban scapes on suits and raincoats, made in collaboration with Daniel Everett, an artist and photographer fascinated by anonymous architectures, bland structures and marginal spaces, including roofs and parking lots.
Grids were also another motif employed in the collection on shirts and trousers and, while Everett also developed several works with grids, the designers were probably referencing timetable grids. The biggest runway show in the world - the daily commute - was indeed another major theme for this collection, with workers in electric blue coats (a reference to the Blue Book Collection?) decorated with minimalist prints of clocks, or with messages such as "Day To Day" or "In Time" and symbolical serial numbers "24-7-365" scattered on several garments and accessories (read: leather grocery bags) as well.
The shoes with coloured bands by Achilles Ion Gabriel also contributed to give a linear feel to the collection, though the time theme and the commuters looks also hinted at the possibility of populating a "non place" regulated by no time, and at the opportunity of making time (as opposed to the concept of being in time) as the tailored garments included were characterised by informal silhouettes and were injected with a youthful energy (see the layered long hanging shirts and bomber jackets).
The theme of time/work/commuters was also evoked in the space where the show took place, Le Centorial, former headquarters of Credit Lyonnais, and therefore a palace of money and a symbol of modern banking in the late 19th century.
At times Études's French minimalism was forgotten in favour of more maximalist elements and prints, but the best thing about this brand is that, by tomorrow, the duo behind it may have moved onto creating something completely different and possibly - who knows - totally unrelated to fashion.
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