Y/Project. Fall 2020 Ready-to-Wear - Paris Fashion Week.

(Images from the designer and the public domain. Credited to the photographer/company where applicable: Gorunway.com)

With the larger fashion houses spreading out expansive collections for their Fall 2020 showings, under the umbrella of, at times, melodramatic and over the top runway exposé.  The desire to multiply and divide up markets continues on, which if their accounts were looked at (especially when a creative director on average, is dumped almost every year), this scattering of ideas to capture all markets may turn out to be a fallacy. Observing Demna Gvasalia Balenciaga's recent showing at Paris Fashion Week and the impact that Vetements had on the fashion industry in its short five years of existing, relays a desire to have and reflect a rebellious inversion towards the fashion industry.  This at times can come off hypocritical and tiresome, particularly as mentioned, when smaller brands try and attempt to bandwagon via the multiple variants of incorporation.  However, there is no doubt that Gvasalia makes a solid case, despite his theatrics, by re-imaging and obscuring elements of fashion. The other designer that comes to mind with a similar vision is Glenn Martens, creative director of Y/Project. 

If lingerie outwear and the more creative, dare I say, intellectual sexiness is now gracing the runways of late and is the new black, then Y/Project would be considered one of the brands which held the line on the said looks, since Marten's took over the reins as creative director in 2013 after the founder of Y/Project Yohan Serfaty passed away from cancer.  He has been steadily toying with the concept of anthiseis fashion after Serfaty's passing, bridging the avant garde with the formal into structured arrays with a reformatted sex appeal.  Now seven years in for Y/Project, Marten's has built a very original brand, that although is not as confronting as Gvasalia's Balenciaga, the reinvigorated Y/Project collections are distinctly original.

At the tail end of 2019, several trends emerged, one was the fine tailoring and the more modernist looks, which sent the deconstruction asymmetrical avant garde looks to the backseat.  The other interconnected trend was a mix and match of thrift styles ala sports wear mixed with formal styles, which although was a street orientated look, may have already petered out as a contender.  Which leaves the structured and unstructured styles as a dualist fusion to which Marten's Fall 2020 collection has captured in conjoining the two.  

Not as subtle as previous collections, Y/Project's latest ensemble under Marten, has maintained his tweaking of layered looks, by reworked the styles on show, in slight variations.  The heavy layering, whilst stripping back revealing the erogenous is obvious throughout, which was, and I to say, mastered by the Gvasalia brothers. However, Marten's multiangled fine tailoring and attention to details keeps his latest collection sleek in its consistency.