C.R.E.O.L.E: BEST NEW FASHION LABEL FROM PARIS! BY Loïc Prigent
Today, we discover a new hyper exciting brand, hyper sexy, hyper political, C.R.E.O.L.E, and we make you a crazy moodboard of the briefs on the catwalks. Activate the subtitles, subscribe and have fun! You've put it inside-out! LOIC: Is it really inside-out?! We're here to see the very first pieces just out of the workshops. Not all finished yet, actually. Yes, we have a front row seat to the birth of a brand, of an aesthetic.
The three graces. Hello, I am Loic Prigent and I film fashion. Subscribe to my channel to see the best of the fashion shows and their backstage. Leave a comment and hit the notification bell. I'm tiring everyone with this monogram. But it is so beautiful. The creator of C.R.E.O.L.E is Vincent Frederic Colombo.
He is 30 years old that week. We filmed him two nights in a row, late at night, while he was photographing the first pieces of the first collection with the photographer and visual artist Fanny Viguier. Fanny Viguier is co-founder with him of the C.R.E.O.L.E. parties.
LOIC: Where are we tonight? This is the press office of a friend and he allows us to use his premises to shoot the whole collection. - Who is doing the photos? - Fanny Viguier, she is a friend. We've been working together for years. I know how Vincent works. We have a kind of ping pong between the constructed and the random that is created each time. In this case, we've been working hard on creolity for almost seven years now.
The look that Kevin wears is inspired by a scarf that I found in a store of African clothes and fabrics. I flashed on this tie and dye side which reminds a lot of the Rastafarian culture. I worked on workwear, so pants that take their essence on the uniforms of the RATP. It was the workers who worked in the construction of the subway who wore these pants. They also had this hat.
- Ah, is this the real hat? - Yes, it's the real hat. Vincent Frederic Colombo is a figure of the Parisian fashion scene, spotted for his street castings, for chic magazines or brands like Kenzo, Vivienne Westwood or Bernard Willhelm. He studied design, fashion, sociology and anthropology. With the photographer Fanny Vivier, he launched these already cult parties which are like an artistic project, the C.R.E.O.L.E written in capitals.
We had met Vincent Frédéric Colombo during his participation in the Jacquemus after-show party in the lavender fields. That's him dancing there. And yes, it was one of the best fashion parties for years. Pure fire. A Jacquemus volcano. Unleashed. His cousin unleashed. Julien gone wild. Everyone raging. I digress, but it's okay to digress. We're on YouTube, we have time.
Today, Vincent Frédéric Colombo launches his label C.R.E.O.L.E. With dots between each letter because it's an acronym. It means consciousness relative to emancipation, overcoming the shackles.
In fact there are 6 basic C's, the basic Monogram has 6 C's for the syllables of the word Creole. C.R.E.O.L.E that I saw as consciousness relative to emancipation, overcoming the shackles. Its aesthetic is Afro Latin Caribbean. A hyper articulated and sinuous vision that speaks of identity, gender, history, philosophy. Small positioning, small reference.
What is written? I don't want to die without Taubira president. There is the monogram and it is done like a 2 euro coin. The famous fishing net top. I redid it with the technique of the real fishing net that I made myself.
- Really? - It took me a week. There's the mesh like the fishing nets, I thought it was cool to work it like a bib that takes the shape, but at the same time, there's volume. I wanted to try to bring this technique with something a little more sportswear, more urban, while referring to architectural elements that we have in the houses. We try to take back a little this idea of claustras, that we can have on certain buildings.
There is the label well placed in a classic way and C.R.E.O.L.E written with the sentence consciousness relative to emancipation, overcoming the shackles. It's a bit long. The brand has been thought out in its entirety right down to the sock. Yes, everything is thought out. Everyone wears socks. We all need them. Here is the logo again.
With a dot between each letter, to indicate that it becomes a symbol. Even though I'm working on the Creole identity, I didn't want some people to feel uncomfortable about wearing something that may not be affiliated with their culture, their family. I've had people come back to me saying: Yeah, but I'm not Creole, can I wear this word on myself? I find that working the word as an acronym brings a message that is even more open than the simple notion of creole, creolity, creolization, because for me, it questions the whole thing. We are in a world that is very much creolized. It is a term that was developed by Edouard Glissant, who considers that all the human contacts that we have, all our life experiences, enrich us and make us feel that even if we come from a particular part of the world, we are enriched by all our encounters throughout our life.
So, it is something that is much stronger than the cultural, linguistic and regional aspect that the word Creole evokes. There is also this notion of the interpenetration of cultures that is very present in this society. In the collection C.R.E.O.L.E, there is delicate sewing, organza, pleats, transparencies, crochet. Yes, it is very studied. Precious, almost couture. But it's mixed with pure, raw, manly workwear, simpler T-shirts, swimwear, socks, durags, bobs.
I also have an organza with this kind of tartan that's cool too. It's a little bit reminiscent of Dickies shirts in terms of the cut. The transparency because I come from hot countries so it's nice to let the skin breathe. And then, there are the pants that go with it too, it's a bit of a Caribbean uncle side, but also sexy, because there is transparency.
I find it very cool, very Caribbean and perfect for the Caribbean heat. All of a sudden there is a homo erotic energy! The C.R.E.O.L.E parties in Paris are an idea of the collective. Big sequined parties, where the DJ is shirtless because it's too hot, where you become friends with people without knowing their name. Where it twerks, and it sails, it hops. We brag, we have fun hitting the walls.
We abs, we raise our arms, we let go, where the images become blurred, we shout, we red light, we have fun, we drop. C.R.E.O.L.E has become synonymous with a Parisian night scene, free of the usual snobbery. We golden shorts, we stretch. And we're sorry we cannot play you the original music of the parties, for royalties reasons. The C.R.E.O.L.E parties create a meeting point between Jamaican sound system culture,
voguing, glam and competitive ballroom, uncompromising Berlin rave and wild carnival rhythms. A joyful mix of afrobeats, cumbia, konpa, zouk, gwo ka and even, oh boy, gabber. Sometimes in small groups, sometimes in large crowds. And when security is watching you, well actually, they're not. Even the security gets caught up in the rhythm.
The DJ is in fishnet swimsuit, the dancers are in fishnet swimsuit. In the streets of Paris by day, in the streets of Paris by night. In the festivals. Vincent Frederic Colombo always and his golden durag. And of course, it overflows. The party ends up invaded from all sides.
In my collection I wanted to evoke things that are often misunderstood, in relation to the overseas territories, to break the cliché of simply "it's beautiful and warm, we have a lush territory. Our people are very smiley." I wanted to have something to appeal to our culture through techniques that evoke architecture. To evoke traditional fabrics, to evoke environmental issues, prints that also evoke a cultural side, the yellow-green, which also has a very Rastafarian side to it, it's often associated with it, but at the same time, a lot of countries in Africa have their flags based on black green and red. I also wanted to bring the notion of Creole aesthetics beyond just this side: We have to show something very convincing. And I find that this is what is missing. I haven't seen until now examples of people who could have said to me: Ah well, there is something that brings us together, that speaks about us.
Without going into something extremely cliché. - I filmed you a long time ago! - Where? - At the Mister France contest. - That's true! It was funny the reactions in the room. People are hysterical in this kind of contest.
I wanted to work on the details of the traditional dresses in the West Indies. These kinds of stockings are all gathered at the bottom, like the old panties. I wanted to do that on sportswear too.
This side is a little more basketball jersey. Here, C.R.E.O.L.E is not a pretext for sunny or exotic clichés. Not really palm trees and tourism, but on the contrary, sometimes hidden or subversive messages about post-colonial shackles, ecological ravages and deadly pesticides. In the inside are black banana weevils. LOIC: It's a relatively toxic insect, isn't it? It is not toxic. It is rather that it decimates the plantations of bananas. And it is the product that we used to fight it that is toxic, the Kepon.
I used it to highlight this insect because we often know the name of the product used to kill it. Chlordecone is a hyper-toxic insecticide that has been dumped for decades to kill banana weevils. The result is one of the worst health scandals, a pollution of water, land and, therefore, of a little bit of everything. For 500 years, according to the experts.
Here are labels of the famous Kepon. It's pretty unique. In fact, Kepon has been forbidden to be distributed in the whole world since the 70's. But France bought back the patents to be able to continue to use it for the banana lobby in the West Indies and Guyana. This one, I found this label. This is the real original label of the American company that produced Kepon, which is the commercial name of chlordecone.
In fact, this is a picture that I found. We saw a jar of the product, an image that dates back to the 70's, and we just took the graphic design of the label. LOIC: If I wear this I wear something very political! In the delirium of chlordecone. Well, it's very small, but it's the chemical formula of the molecule.
LOIC: This is the molecule that kills the black weevils of the banana tree. - It is this formula that caused an ecological disaster? - Yes, exactly. I also made swimsuits! Under the monogram, which is the amplified version of the basic monogram, there is a botanical engraving of a banana tree that is placed with an echo effect, as if to evoke this notion of diffusion of what happened on the territory. Vincent Frédéric Colombo tries out a handmade crochet piece by this guy: Yann Dechambre, who worked on it for a very long time, which can be measured in episodes of TV series. LOIC: I'm curious to know how much work it represents? That's three evenings of work. A little twelve hours.
And that's not the worst part, the whole look took hours! LOIC: So this one was the whole Lost series? It was The Crown I think! - For real? - Yes! This one, I don't remember, I watched Sky Rojo today. It's a Spanish show about prostitutes who kill people and escape from a brothel. It's totally in tone.
Perfect for the carnival. And it's moodboard time! Briefs in fashion shows!!! Our non-exhaustive moodboard starts with Jean Paul Gaultier from his spring summer 1990, so, a June 1989 fashion show at the Cirque d'hiver in Paris, with a hyper platinum salute. The brief, now high-waisted and worn with straps because Jean Paul Gaultier has fun sliding the male underwear to the treatment and fetishization that we usually reserve for female lingerie.
Here, the satin briefs and long gloves from Strip-Tease. We also have slip pants, evening slip, good evening. The anatomical brief. In 1991, Calvin Klein instrumentalized the basics of male underwear. The actor Mark Wahlberg appears on the catwalk. We are in the bull's eye. Not subtle.
The man sexualized on a grand scale because Calvin Klein will bury the whole world under megatons of briefs with his name on the elastic waistband. For decades. In 1996, Tom Ford, who is at Gucci at the time, decides not to leave the monopoly of the market of the underwear to Calvin Klein. He prepares the ground with briefs with metallic decoration and suddenly micro briefs cut in the shape of a basket and the model at the end of the catwalk. Are you ready? Iconic moment of the 1990s and BOUM! The Gucci thong with the GG logo on the coccyx. You can see that the room applauds him when he returns backstage, admiring the mental strength it took the models to do this.
In the summer of 1996, in Paris, a brand of briefs and underwear emerges in the fashion context. Shirtology. It is clearly not a suggestion of underwear that are not made for every day or every night. They are defended by Totem, the same press office of Raf Simons.
We are in the golden chaps. The crystal fringed briefs, the supermodels, briefs designed in Parisian workshops made to measure haute couture. The brief is treated here as a fashion object. Two half-briefs, so one brief, the black brief with an ass-bag, hyper practical. Simple joy of the hyper-muscled model with hyper-formatted body, matrix jaw.
The final is a brigade of swimming pool lifeguards. The great classic of Dsquared is the man who takes his shower on the set and leaves with this magnificent short towel. Trompe I'oeil. Ludovic de Saint Sernin will make a different one twenty years later.
The brief and its garter, the brief of the polar bear. We are in 2001, everyone swears by the low-rise pants of Alexander McQueen. Then we have the low waist brief.
Really approaching the pubis. Dean and Dan, the twins of Dsquared, position themselves as official suppliers of the Gogo Boys in Ibiza and Mykonos. On the one hand, they want to show their sense of tailoring. On the other hand, they can't help but want to put their top models in briefs. Result Will Chalker in red briefs, but the top is preppy-university. The towel is never far away.
The poacher's briefs, the briefs that are not only low cut, but half open. Danger. There is even a tab. We're so low-waisted that we have to add belt loops so we don't lose the thing along the way. The shower comes back, it's their DNA. The shower on stage,
the YMCA locker room without the foot smell. And the mannequin who was showering is parading all wet. This one takes it off and throws it into the pit. A hood and a slip, a top model, it is fashion. The green micro thong. But make it fashion!
Dsquared runway show footage is the occasion for anatomical stocking pans ready to be turned into GIFs on Tumblr for eternity. And at the end, Dean and Dan pop the champagne. The model taking a shower, well, he's with his model buddies.
The Model Airlines plane crashed on a deserted island. Styling effect. Let's mix: Jungle, nerd with glasses, red leopard slip and hop! And at the end, the two twins Gregory Pecs and Marlon Abs. At Versace, they also put themselves out there for a while and it's black briefs that open the show and black briefs that close the show.
At Dolce & Gabbana, it's the Sicilian man who gets out of his Sicilian bed and the Sicilian heat is such that he forgot to put on pants. And to be plausible, the cast of this fashion show was made of real Sicilian guys. Even at the Sicilian funeral, some Sicilians forgot to put on their Sicilian suits. Luxury brands now have swimwear lines, a pretext to show off idealized beach bodies, to make Ken, Barbie's husband, body dysmorphic. The swimsuit with Fendi's signature stripe, the swimsuit with Versace's iconic marine print. Men's swimwear is now a part of the vocabulary of young brands.
From its first men's show, Jacquemus poses the gadjo swimsuit and the printed shorts for supertanked bodies. Victor Barragan makes the Op Art swimsuit, hypnotic effect on the buttocks and the front. And the king of briefs, designer for men, is of course Ludovic de Saint Sernin, black evening briefs, boxers with styling that makes you sweat at the belt and the iconic brief like a towel.
Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who launched this brief with eyelets and laces, provoking, inspired by photos of Robert Mapplethorpe, became viral as soon as it was released. So this is one of our most iconic pieces. The Eyelet Briefs.
It was featured all over in the press and it had a huge viral moment. Since then, it's become a signature of the brand. So Gaultier has the triangular tits and we have the Eyelet Briefs. When Tom Ford launches his Underwear line for fall winter 2018, he doesn't present on the sly at the beginning of the shows, but he organizes a finale of models in underwear. Boxers, then satin briefs whose movement intrigues. And Tom Ford likes intrigue.
Boxer in animal print, camera look, half turn, camera look, look me in the eye. Half turn. Animal satin boxers and actually the whole cast comes out like this. Boxer in material, wet effect.
Satin boxers mystery, no real mystery. Wolves of Wall Street underwear, the underwear Justin Bieber wears to confess, wet underwear, purple leopard. The audience applauds, but unfortunately Tom Ford does not greet in leopard-print satin boxers, but in his 15,000 suit. The Mozart of designer underwear is Jeremy Scott at Moschino. The king of offbeat beefcake, but beefcake nonetheless.
The technical cyclist's underwear. The very chic black brief, subtle, under a black lace suit. Cruello de Vil in Moschino zebra briefs. Here, it's not styling, but a pure pretext to show off the bionic legs of Italian supermodel Pietro Boselli. Or the long white Johns purely pretexts. More risky, the kinky latex briefs fetish.
Ambiance night porter super dark, masochistic masc Moschino. Or the crystal embroidered briefs for working on the Vegas Strip. It's not me interpreting, it's literally the inspiration.
But all of these briefs are typical Jeremy Scott pop parodies, as evidenced by his one-piece panther briefs from the World's Strongest Man. Circus attraction for Moschino's 2019 cruise. These days, it's lewd briefs that inspire our designers. Loaded. Toxic. Here at Sibling, the brief that spills out of the jeans. A nod to the American soccer uniform.
The overflowing shorts, the lacing well placed as if drawn for a cartoon. The orange underwear in strategic overlay. When the model turns around, you can see we were dealing with an orange jockstrap. And then, the last pair of pants have another surprise when it returns backstage. At Gucci, Alessandro Michele also explores the theme of an offbeat male underwear. The nerd with the apparent boxer brief. Paradox.
The pants with drawn briefs, the diamond briefs on impeccably cut white suits. The computer scientist with his black leather briefs, the underwear on top. The idea of making visible what he really thinks about. The red zipped brief, the Gucci monogrammed kangaroo brief as the ultimate symbol of intimate wealth. The decorative scallop shell brief for an in-between masculinity, less triumphant, less telegraphed. The American designer Telfar Clemens no longer wants to leave the monopoly of one-piece swimsuits with daring cuts to girls.
He argues: It's not for men or for women, it's just clothing. It desexualizes the swimsuit, it upsets the clichés. Another American, Thom Browne, avenges the women tortured by centuries of corsets, crinolines and uncomfortable turns, these women's ceremonial clothes that did not respect the anatomical logic.
Fleece shell for official outing, brief with nautical stripes under structure of dress-panier, jockstrap blazon, brief retaining the structure of a low crinoline. We think that women are avenged of these centuries of dictatorship of impractical lingerie. Rick Owens also attacks the monolith of the American white brief, a basic symbol of triumphant masculinity. For his men's fashion show filmed in early 2021 in Venice, in the middle of the pandemic, the show was opened by Rick Owens' muse, Tyrone Dylan in a dramatic outfit. But the classic kangaroo brief. Worn with waders more imposing than those of Aramis and Porthos.
Except that the parade takes place after the terrorist attack on Capitol Hill in Washington. And actually, we can't see very well. But there's a devilish pentagram on the front of the underwear, a symbol of hyper-toxic male energy. About to boil over.
Rick Owens says it loud and clear, his show is about male rage. These briefs are toxic. You can say a lot about the world with a pair of underwear in a fashion show. Oh but it's Axel, one of the C.R.E.O.L.E models, who also appears on this Vivienne Westwood show, in these pink briefs worn on platform shoes and tulle cloud. It bends hard. The world is anarchic, but your body is not.
And yes, that day, there was a political/ecological message. The Vivienne Westwood briefs were eco-friendly and in a mix of hemp and bamboo. Come on, flex solo. That was the Moodboard: The briefs on the catwalk!!! For me, it brings back family memories. It's things I've always seen.
I've always seen my two grandmothers sewing. I have aunts who made carnival costumes. Sewing has always run in the family. I think the first time I allowed myself to touch a machine was when I was a senior in high school.
We had done a fashion show project, we had to raise money for our trip to the big cities of the big schools. Our teacher had brought back sewing machines. We had managed to do some things in class and I said to myself: I actually have almost all the automatisms of having seen my grandmothers or my aunts sewing! I just, by mimicry, reproduced what I had already seen. This was our first video on C.R.E.O.L.E! And its creator Vincent Frédéric Colombo. Subscribe to the channel to see the best of fashion, leave a comment and above all, click on the notification bell to not miss any of the action.
Pour ne rien louper de I'action.
2021-06-22 16:34
