Serene workers

Lemaire FW17
By Alex James Taylor | Fashion | 18 January 2017
Photography Clara Delaporte

On a busy first day of FW17 Paris fashion week men’s, Lemaire brought a sense of calm to procedures. Inside the Palais de la Femme – a centre providing shelter to women in need and their children – Christophe Lemaire and co-designer Sarah-Linh Tran presented a collection underlined by a soft romanticism.

Call centre employee voices played through the speakers, offering their services only to be greeted by silence on the other end. The collection itself riffed on those tradespeople perhaps sent out to help the mute customers, realising a contemporary and elegant workwear-inspired aesthetic.

In bold Autumnal hues – olives and soft camels: coffee, chocolate and tobacco, an essential fashion week-survival kit – versatile layering and relaxed tailoring created interchangeable looks. From dramatic raincoats crafted in water-repellent cotton wool to subtle button detailing and reporter-style knits in degrade. Pleated cargo pants and trenches loosened that traditionally controlled Lemaire silhouette.  

As the textured sound of Brian Eno, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius’s collaborative track The Belldog filled the room, models appeared for the show’s finale: a perfect example of layered serenity.

GALLERYBackstage images from Lemaire FW17

GALLERYCatwalk images from Lemaire FW17





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