Better come hungry - Dauphinette is serving up a tailoring feast.
Known as "the happiest brand on Earth," the New York label, led by creative director Olivia Cheng, unveiled its fall/winter 2024 collection, titled "The Vegetarian."
Cheng makes her designs on the floor of her apartment. She is vegan, but practices "in a brutally physical state of mind." (Cheng describes herself as "equal parts eccentric and insatiable, ethereal and wild, good-eyed and cool-headed.")
The collection, on view at St. Mark's in the Bowery, uses over 600 beetle wings, tens of thousands of braided locks of hair, and utensils (fork glasses), a motif of innocent hunger and seamstress-like insatiability.
The designer's "Bedroom Floor Couture" is a sharp departure from her previous meticulously polished collections. Instead, she offers a line with eccentric maximalism.
Dauphinette presented quirky garments with a playful character - seas of beading, lots of colour and dazzling embellishments, the 30 designs felt DIY, handmade and experimental with deliberate imperfections - such as dangling threads and asymmetrical detailing, a delicate balance to Cheng's duality of 'ethereal and wild'.
Some garments were made from objects normally found in the home - skirts adorned with dozens of safety pins, forks made to look like glasses, and a dress fashioned from a woven basket of ties.
Other pieces were unmistakably Dauphinette, like oversized jackets and ponchos drowned in beads and rhinestones, shoes made with long locks of hair - and a wink to the brand's beetle motif, with green metallic creatures stitched onto jackets and dresses. / BGNES