Enfants Riches Déprimés. Spring 2025 - Paris Fashion Week.

 

The improvement in Henri Alexander Levy's relatively new fashion brand Enfants Riches Déprimés, although it was claimed that the brand started back in 2012 as a T-Shirt printing hobby, has been significant.  From admitting that he has no stylist training and in an interview for Vogue Italia in 2018, Levy also claimed he cannot sew.  Not unlike the roots of the Avant-garde stalwart Rick Owens as a former Los Angeles resident, now residing in Paris with his wife Michèle Lamy, despite the nearly Three decades age difference between Levy and Owens.  Owens rise to fame and notoriety did not occur overnight, yet like Levy he had access to 'backdoor passes', so to speak, ascending him as the last remaining independent fashion designer who frequents Paris runways, left on the planet.  Can Levy's projection ensure the same?  Of course, it's hard to say.

However, backdoor passes into the fashion world are crucial to get over the first hurdle of survival, as are the heavyweight connections.  Levy cleary has those, in the form of actor Jay Leto and other celebrities, yet it has been Courtney Love, who has tucked Levy under her wing, by introducing him to the Los Angeles stylist and costume designer Arianne Phillips.  Levy's striking transformation from screen printing t-shirts to a well crafted version of the late Vivienne Westwood esque 1976 Kings Road, London punk looks.  Which were inspired by a mix of early 1970s New York City proto-punk, and the 1973 Situationist art movement of Paris.  Levy's Enfants Riches Déprimés is certainly a homage to the latter.

But, exclusivity and high costs to price out excesses is novel in its application, akin to the Italian Art Radicals like Superstudio of the 1960s, who created expensive and garish one off art pieces/furniture, including fashion as a protest against capitalism and hyper consumption.  Is not a new concept.  Yet extraordinary risky if you do have profit in mind, even if it is a homage or more specific a simulacrum of past artistic romanticism.  Independent fashion brands are disappearing at an alarming rate, including their Creative Directors in a pre and post cologremetate world of fashion, which has been caved up between the stock price of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Kering.  The scraps are far and few between, as China the luxury buyer for the West is falling into a recessing and the costs of producing a garment in a Climate Changing world are now becoming unattainable within its practicality.

Levy held his Enfants Riches Déprimés Spring 2025 collection at Sotheby's Paris, as a kind of Demna of Balenciaga hyperreal fame offer to the antifashion ethos, reflecting the exclusivity theory of Levy's brand name.  Does indeed work as a artistic and theatrical concept, and the styles for Enfants Riches Déprimés are undoubtedly improving, with some of the well crafted and styled looks to date drawing influences from the plethora of Japanese Street style looks from the last Five decades. 

Enfants Riches Déprimés t-shirts begin at $500+, with leather jackets peaking out at $7,500 if you wish to be part of Levy's 'protest' of pricing out everyone. 

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(A.Glass 2025)