After the club «La Station» in Aubervilliers last March, the monumental Courrèges white square lands this Wednesday, September 29, 2021 in a new party place: the Bois de Vincennes in Paris. A park on the edge of the city where many free parties have taken place in recent years. The square, stripped of its walls, is here soberly signified on the ground with paint*, taking nature as a decor.
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At the origin of this collection, and for this second show, a memory: it is in this clearing that Nicolas Di Felice and his friend Erwan Sene - with whom he composed the soundtrack of the show - danced all night long a few summers ago. A moment of grace that inaugurated many others: notably the reunion with his boyfriend after the lockdown, when the Bois de Vincennes was one of the only places where youth could still party together. «Both of us knowing», by invoking these times of friendship dear to Nicolas Di Felice, pays homage to these moments of intimacy that, sometimes, crowds experience in unison. A way for Courrèges to show its desire to be one with its public.
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These memories of jubilation have fed a collection designed around the festival wear. In line with what was initiated by Nicolas Di Felice, the archetypes of the counterculture are mixed here subtly to the vocabulary of Courrèges - all with an atelier know-how. Thus, the capes start with an extremely simple and geometric pattern (inspired by a round cape from
1968, a triangular one from 1969 and a square one from 1995) with a cutting detail to build the shoulder. The proportions have been exaggerated to completely cover the body - or for cuddling together underneath. Parkas and bombers come into dialogue with heritage coats and trapeze skirts.
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The «Loop» theme - crisscrossing yokes of fabric found on bras, dresses, skirts, baggy pants and even on the handles of this season’s «Loop» bag - was inspired by the straps of a 1976 Courrèges dress (the first piece in Nicolas Di Felice’s personal collection, acquired years earlier). Fabrics and prints continue to reinvent heritage, like this trompe-l’oeil ribbed knit made from strips of mirrored vegetal vinyl or these diagonal stripes taken from a 1968 chevron stripe.
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Silver, azure blue, pink (André Courrèges’ favorite color, a symbol of tenderness and optimism), pale yellow and ochre: a palette that subtly suggests the world of techno and punctuates a collection with an assumed minimalism. Like these «scarf» dresses in transparent pleated mesh, composed of two rectangles of fabric and attached by two triangles. Or the last three dresses, each made of a simple strip of fabric, like for the girls wrapped in a piece of vinyl for a 1963 fashion show and immortalized by Irving Penn.
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«Both of us knowing» claims a form of purism at the heart of Courrèges and dear to Nicolas Di Felice. To better revive the feelings.
