With smartphones always at hand, we theoretically have acquired third eyes, yet we often cannot believe what we see. The doubleness of stage managed and retouched images, plus advancements in AI and deep fake technology continue to splinter reality. In this environment, touch (which implies intimacy or proximity) gains primacy. Christopher Nying played with some of these ideas in his latest Our Legacy collection. Titled April in Winter, it was based, as always, on personal experience, but also said something about the zeitgeist.
If we take everything down to essentials, Nying’s preoccupations this season were light and temperature. Because of the cold and darkness that precede the coming of spring, the aspect of “awakening” is especially heightened. More often than not it’s also thwarted; just when you think you can walk barefoot on the lawn, the temperatures will drop and the newly green landscape will be covered in a magic blanket of snow. Mother Nature’s whims play with the emotions, and, said Nying, introduce an element of indecisiveness into getting dressed: “You don’t really know what to wear.” That uncertain state of mind was reflected in the way Our Legacy’s models wore the collection: dressed for any contingency in many (light) layers.
Spring’s styling followed along the lines of last season’s. “I wanted to continue that language, but [asked myself] ‘How can we do this in spring?’” the designer said. You could even go so far as to call this collection a sequel to the one that preceded it. (This provides a neat tie-in to the horror movie sub theme here.) Nying’s conceit for spring was to take familiar fall silhouettes and garments and render them in thin, airy fabrics. In a sense it was all camouflage. Snowflake knit sweaters, for example, were made using what he described as a “breathable” hemp yarn that looks like wool suiting. This fluid idea of inter-seasonality seeped into the idea of gender; the elements, from heels to trousers, were for men and women alike (albeit sized differently).
There was something of a skogsmulle (forest troll) aspect to the earthy palette and the layering, but there were grown-up (i.e. work-ready) options in the mix, and citified looks as well. The model in the plaid-zip up in look 9 could have been channeling early Oasis; other pieces that were treated with a pigment dye designed to fade over time had a vintage feel. The bondage accessories worked well with the hair-raiser prints, which were inspired, Nying said, by VHS horror movies.
These days, the nightly news can be frightening, but Nying was looking back to his childhood when he would watch movies like The Ladder in the daytime, “to not be too scared,” and he played with that “horror in the day” idea much as he did with binaries like spring and winter and perception and reality. This tactile collection felt very close to life as it is lived. Nying can always find fantasy in the everyday. As they say, life is stranger—and often even more wonderful—than fiction.
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