Paris (AFP)
The post-apocalyptic universe of Marine Serre was well before the hour populated by masked and hooded beings.
On the second day of Paris Fashion Week, the young French designer wants to "embrace" the world upset by the pandemic, with uncompromising fashion.
Sensitive souls abstain: his spring-summer 2021 collection was presented on Tuesday in "Amor Fati", a disturbing film with strong images accompanied by strident music.
"This collection is the mirror of the last five months. I always work like that, it is the world around us which has changed radically", explains to AFP Marine Serre.
His previous collection, which anticipated today's imposed style with anti-pollution masks as a fashion accessory, was very successful.
Three weeks after this parade, "we were all confined".
"The mask arrived in my collections a year and a half ago. I used to go to work by bike and I found that it was not pleasant in Paris," says Marine Serre.
She felt that a stylist should offer this piece for the needs of everyday city life, just like the raincoat.
"At the time, nobody thought about it, it was not very pretty, today we are forced to, it's different, you have no choice. Masks, we have been selling them for a long time. year and a half ".
After impressive parades with a dystopian aesthetic, she has opted this season for a short film inspired by the concept of Amor Fati ("love of fate") by Nietzsche which invites to embrace reality with its share of chaos and d horrors to overcome it.
In each of the three parts of the film play the same actors wearing different clothes: costumes or second-skin suits printed with crescents - his favorite motif -, black jackets with multiple pockets, capes or crinoline, visors and sunglasses.
- Perfectionist -
"It is an enhancement of the strength that clothing has today, how it protects us, helps us face our daily lives, to communicate and to convey a message, to move forward while remaining perfectionist in its production" , sums up the stylist.
Spearhead with Belgian Dries Van Noten of a manifesto for more responsible fashion supported by hundreds of small houses who are committed to producing less and rethinking fashion shows, she says she will "adapt accordingly of what's going to happen ".
"I have nothing against redoing a show in the coming months. What is interesting in Fashion weeks is to create a synergy, a moment of sharing, being together", she underlines, while estimating that there are too many.
"Having 25 (fashion weeks) a year doesn't make sense."
For an independent brand like his, "two collections in a year is already a lot creatively speaking".
"Technically speaking, to build a skirt that is made from a carpet and so that it remains for you 30 years, it is time, a precious time that we have forgotten because of the + fast fashion +".
The change, "this word of the moment" passes for Marine Serre by the way in which the clothes are produced.
Currently 50% of its parts are made with clothes recovered at the end of their life.
"It's a manufacture that is extremely complicated. The difficulty in all of this is to be able to increase in quantity, but also to lower the price," she explains.
Its collections are produced in Europe, "especially in Italy, Portugal and France" with family factories "which can understand this approach".
During confinement, "there was a real questioning about how we live, what we eat, how we dress. Most of the things we believed in are becoming or have already become essential", congratulates the designer.
© 2020 AFP