Comparing three designers' jacket interpretationsfrom @frontoffice.co

Transcript

Alright. I'll tell you a story. Three designers take on the same jacket and come up with wildly different results. So the jacket in question is a track jacket, the top half of a tracksuit. They're usually nylon, polyester, piping over the seams, color blocking. Like, we know what a track jacket looks like. Designer one is Wales Bonner. So Grace Wales Bonner, her father's Jamaican, her mother's white English. So her work brings a lot of an Afro Caribbean influence into European luxury. She's telling the story of her family. It's really unfair to present just one because she's so prolific. So this is my favorite. There's this red pink tracksuit, large exaggerated collar, and the silhouette is a slim sculpted look. With those design elements, she's giving us an idea of the seventies. So these rank are apparently are based on what her father used to wear. But this isn't a one to one recreation. She elevates the piece with these handmade crochet trims, thick ribbing luxury fabric. And by elevating what we take for granted, she's telling the story of seventies Jamaica, showing us the cultural status of the tracksuit. It's not just sportswear but it's high status on par with luxury tailoring. So company number two is also about nostalgia. It's Bad. Her personal philosophy is to think of clothing as personal heirlooms. They're things that can be passed down. So take a look at her track jacket. So her piece isn't really about sports performance, but this shape, this block is actually based on a vintage children's jacket. Instead of nylon, she uses cotton. And you can see from the hand stitched embroidery details that this is something that's quite personal. And when she first started her brand in tier, almost everything that she good was made from vintage fabric. Like this doesn't feel commercial. You feel like when you're handed this, you feel like this is your grandparents' clothes or something that you find in a vintage shop. So her big idea is about preserving American tradition. History, memory, craftsmanship. Finally, company number three, Martine Rose. And this design is wild. Martine Rose draws from ninety's rave culture and peripheral subcultures in The UK. And if you're not paying attention, her jacket from afar looks quite conventional. You've got the crispy nylon texture. You've got the color blocking, the oversized silhouettes. And when you look at it, you go like, yeah, I get it. Nineties UK rank. And then you look closely, and you notice something's not quite right about this shoulder. And you trace the fabric down, and then you see something that's closer to a shawl or like a toga. And as soon as you see it, the illusion of a retro tracksuit breaks. And then you realize that this is not a regular tracksuit. This is actually a this is dressmaking. So what are the ideas here? Is she showing complex pattern making ending up in a tier tracksuit? Ultimately telling a story about worse, about high low culture. How she's a very refined technical designer inspired by 90s sportswear low culture shapes. So what's the washer? So I think it's really interesting to compare common garments with a wide interpretation. You know, and once you step out of who makes the best tracksuit, you open yourself up to a more interesting question. Like, which ideas resonate most with me? Which stories are the most interesting? Is it the tracksuit and its place in seventies Jamaican culture? Is it the preservation of fifties Americana? Or is it the mixing of high low culture? Each brand shows that if you've got command over your craft, if you have a design language, design vocabulary, what you're not showing people is not just fabric and stitching. What you are trying to communicate are bigger ideas.