Martine Rose has a deadpan talent for materializing socio-psychological states. This season, she’s turned it onto a skewering of the discombobulated ways that WFH has impacted the manner in which people dress. The people in her lookbook stand caught in the endless hybrid office/domestic employment cycle that’s become corporately normalized since the pandemic. “It’s almost a dream-state we found ourselves in, somewhere between work and sleep. The boundaries have been really broken down and blurred between working from home, and working in the office. It’s sort of like a very murky sort of bed-sleep-work day that never ends, taking Zoom meetings until whatever time,” she observed, with perfect irony, on a Zoom call from her London studio.
The “numb and surreal” feeling of this new way of living (as she puts it in her press release) manifests in a collection that subtly negotiates personal v public dual realities in all her subversively kinky ways. There are office-presenting tailored suits—yes, in the Martine Rose world, they turn out to be made from women’s lingerie fabric. “I bought up all the deadstock from an old Italian ladies’ underwear factory that sadly closed down during Covid. It’s this beautiful power-mesh they used to make for girdles and corsets.”
Her bed-work idea led her to thinking about that
all-too familar digital-meeting scramble to pull on something to wear from a heap of clothes at home. Thus, the perma-wrinkle texture she had woven into Japanese denim, and the quick-change device of “twin-sets” to pull on over the head. Not just a cardigan and matching sweater, but fused jacket-coat-and-knit looks too.
Eiderdowns and pajamas in “granny florals“ turned up as frilled-edge comfort-blanket stoles draped stylishly around the shoulders of pretty blue-and-white flower-sprigged total looks. Trust Martine Rose to give an accurate commentary on where we are. Her ability to do that, while shifting the dial on what’s cool—usually well ahead of the pack—is exactly what makes her a legend amongst followers. A footnote on that: when fans zoom in on these pictures, they’ll see the future in the bulb-toed dress shoes she’s pioneering with this collection. They’re a sly but definite step away from her square-toe shoes which influenced the whole of menswear fashion a while back. Where the great Martine Rose leads, the rest follow.
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