Designer Julien David is usually best known for his surface elaborations and printed details. For his new men and women's collections, though, he switched the attention on the cut of specific garments - utility clothes and Boy Scout, school and military uniforms.
The main inspiration wasn't certainly extremely new, but the designer was able to reinvent his references in a convincing way, slightly tweaking the starting garments and stripping them of their most boring and formal elements.
At times he also combined this main inspiration with references to the great outdoors, decorating his pieces with utility pockets or blank and useless patches with geometric shapes to filter classic Boy Scouts badges through a conceptual eye. Accessories comprised the lederhosen reinvented as a slightly menacing leather harness.
The somber and dark moods hanging over the world may have inspired the colour palette that comprised chocolate browns, deep navy blues and military greens.
The women's offer was more convincing than the men's: even though some of the pieces were clearly unisex, the most desirable garments comprised the cargo pants matched with shirts with gigot sleeves (proof that the historical style sleeve will still be trendy come next season) and the blue tops with laser cut sleeves decorated with lace collars with a delicate motif of waves around the edge, matched with rubber coated or pleated mesh skirts worn with hiking boots.
There was a final political twist in the collection: while the foliage print evoked the wallpapers designed by Victorian poet, writer, translator and socialist lecturer William Morris, a top featured a series of languages spoken in the European Union - from Italian to Suomea (Finnish) pointed at global unity rather than at divisions.
Maybe these clothes could be a good wardrobe for a trip to an alpine resort, but they could also be uniforms for modern partisans with a penchant for multiculturalism.
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