Drones first debuted in fashion in February 2014 when they appeared on Fendi's runway in Milan. But Coronavirus has pushed the fashion industry to find other devices and technologies to enhance the runway experience. In the last year most shows have indeed gone digital or have been turned into entertaining visual experiences, from films to video games.
Dutch designer Duran Lantink (known for the "vagina pants" worn by Janelle Monàe in her 2018 video for song "PYNK") tried to combine in his debut runway the movie concept with drones. In the film his models walk around the empty rooms and corridors of the 17th-century Dutch royal Soestdijk Palace in Baarn, Utrecht, surrounded by flying drones.
Sold by the Dutch state to real estate company Meyer Bergman Erfgoed Groep, the palace should be converted into a hotel, restaurant and luxury flats, as well as workspaces that should be destined to creative businesses and individual ventures, from urban planners and interior design specialists to nature conservators and hospitality consultants.
By 2024 the palace will be turned into "Made by Holland", a leading centre for innovation, entrepreneurship and the arts for researching sustainable manufacturing solutions.
This sounds like an exciting idea that will strengthen the reputation of the country as innovator, but also represent a symbol of new life after Coronavirus and, while it will be intriguing to see how the different wings of the palace with their opulent decorations will be used for music, dance, drama, film and photography representations, Lantink provided us with a preview of its spaces.
Models walked through the empty corridors and rooms of the palace with its furniture pieces at times covered with white sheets. The sense of loneliness and desolation were heightened by the buzzing of the drones (a metaphor for the noises produced by people at runways just before the show starts?).
Fastidious high-tech flies, the drones in the film at times provided unusual views on the clothes (unfortunately, not too many) and, while they may not have been a new idea, the drones worked pretty well in this context, their constant buzz offering a sense of urgency and anxiety, with a feeling of impending doom added (moods that embody the historical period we are living in, with the Cronavirus health emergency and the current Israel-Gaza crisis).
But the drones weren't the real protagonists of the film: Lantink has become known for recycling and upcycling designer clothes, combining maybe high-heeled shoes by Prada with neon coloured sneakers, or sectioning off a tailored coat and recombining it with a workwear item.
Most of his clothes celebrate the divided self (usually he borrows parts from two designs): close-up you realise the final creation is a Frankenstein monster-like assemblage or aggregate, yet at the same time you can clearly see that there is a lot of technique involved as Lantink disassembled the original patterns and reassembled them in new configurations, rather than casually ripping bits and pieces here and there to reassemble them haphazardly.
The results were inventive with Louis Vuitton bags turned into a bustier coat or a mini-dress (a technique reminiscent of Dapper Dan's iconic pieces), designs that seemed more exciting than quite a few creations seen on Louis Vuitton's runways in the last few seasons (as noted in a previous post, it is often the bootlegged piece that ends up being more desirable than the original one…).
Lantink has been working along these lines since 2013 (but this was his first runway show) and so far he has mastered the art of the assemblage pretty well: his strongest and most desirable pieces are definitely the coats; some dresses especially the ones with one breast out (in this case the dress was recreated from an unsold sequinned Balmain piece) and half-dresses sewn onto nude body pieces to give the illusion of nudity, are instead dedicated to more daring consumers; the diamanté thong is a cheeky tribute to Tom Ford's designs for Gucci (circa 1997), but in this case it was made with recycled materials and decorated with Duran Lantink's signature logo, while the gold and silver designs – shirts, skirts, coats and bomber jackets – that appeared towards the end of the film combined the rigidity of metal with a liquid mercury effect.
All the designs included in this collection were made by Lantink with his assistant during teh lockdown, reusing leftover materials from collaborations with stores and brands and repurposing unsold designer-label clothes by prominent fashion houses such as Balmain, Balenciaga, Prada, Vêtements and many others. The final designs prove that working with deadstock is not a limit as many may think, but a way to find new solutions that may encourage more companies to stop destroying unsold items.
Yet maybe the most intriguing aspect of this collection is not the collection per se, but the way Lantink is developing his practice: he renamed this collection Spring/Summer-Autumn/Winter, a concept that hints at the possibility of reducing the numbers of presentations to focus on the actual clothes (that will be available on his site between May and September; you will have to subscribe to keep updated about availability).
Besides, in future he will continue to work employing as main materials unsold inventory, but he is also working on a new service on his website. Customers will be able to sell their unwanted clothes through it or Lantink will work with consumers to understand how to transform them into something more unique and exclusive to keep fever. Those consumers who opt for this solution will also receive complete records of the processes their clothes went through. So this sounds like a new step towards fashion sustainability that will hopefully inspire us to recycle more and will make us fall in love with newly revamped and restyled garments.
