Martine Rose channels London’s seedy side for SS23 – I-D
Thu 16 Jun
The London Fashion Week Men’s schedule may have been stripped back this season, but that presented the perfect stage for Martine Rose to make her post-pandemic return to the catwalk and make a case for why London men’s fashion is so vital. Of course, Martine is very much the archetypal London designer. What she does is rooted in the city, in its various overlapping styles, subcultures and tribes and its musical and fashion histories. Which is exactly why she stages her shows in the capital’s fringe spaces and sites of authentic community, whether that is a Latin American market in Tottenham near her old studio, or her children’s school in Kentish Town. Wherever it is, she draws inspiration from the real people who surround and inspire her, the real people of the British capital so rarely celebrated in the realms of luxury fashion.
Which is not to say what she does is rooted in philosophies of normcore and the prosaic realities of easy wearability, but instead in the holistic magic that springs from the cross-pollination of the metropolis. She is interested in the way clothes mould us, and the way we mould the clothes we wear to our needs and desires. She creates clothes that feel unique in the way that clothes feel unique after we’ve worn them for years.
But desire may as well have been the one-word distillation of the theme this season. The show was staged in the arches beneath Vauxhall station that once housed Chariots – one of London’s most storied gay saunas. In its heyday, it was the libidinal hub of an area that has been home to the sexiest and seediest hedonists since the Pleasure Gardens inhabited the area in the seventeenth century. Incidentally it is just down the road from where Martine herself grew up. “It’s a really important, old community in London,” Martine explained. “And I wanted to celebrate it. It needs to be enjoyed.” Not many designers do pleasure as interestingly as Martine.