Martine Rose’s inherently political and celebratory SS24 – PORT
Tue 13 Jun
Ethan Price
A heatwave – it’s dangerous but sexy. Perfect weather for the Martine Rose man. Fitting, also, that this Spring-Summer 2024 collection from Rose feels like both a celebration and a warning. Two states of feeling that rarely collide but are absolutely encapsulating and engulfing the present moment.
"Rose tells us that what we are is an eccentric amalgamation of different cultures honed and sieved through a very British vision and sensibility."
Ethan Price
Everyone seems both terrified and hedonistically jubilant at once right now. We don’t know what’s around the corner, but the adrenaline that the fear is producing has to be burnt off – and so we party, and so we dance and shriek with laughter. This feels like the most scary and most incredible time to be alive. It seems Rose feels this. Maybe she always has – her continual reference to peripheral subcultures and the music that keeps them out all night attests to this – and the brand has been gradually building alongside this maniacal state we’re currently tight-rope-walking through. Things are uneasy. One model wears a perfect pulling-at-the-club outfit: a hairy-chest-revealing skin-tight black top, the zipper neckline undone, strings of pearls, distressed brown leather trousers with multiple buckles running up the calf, some mock-croc loafers. But, then – the violent yellow of a hi vis safety jacket. The collar is popped, and the shoulder seam is dropped, it swings suggestively – come here, but also don’t touch, all collisions avoided. It is a look that reverberates with this maddening desire to be joyful amidst the difficulties Britain is facing. I want to have fun, I want to be sweaty, to have sex, to feel free, but I’m also so scared, I need security. We’re all on the verge of falling.
What is this SS24 collection doing during a British heatwave? It’s playing pool at the boozer and hanging out in the corner where the security camera’s blindspot is, and none of the balls are getting potted because it’s had too many lagers. It’s trying to see itself in the mirror of the gents, but everything is hazy and the stench of bleach and urinals makes its eyes blur even more. It’s delighting in these things – in knowing that it’s the sweat underneath the perfume that makes people want it. That the point of clothes is to make others want to strip them off. This feels fundamental to our current state in London, where so much of the humanity and the reality of the city is being removed or covered up by a façade of purity. A larger meditation on London itself is what Rose always achieves with her collections. And London as a microcosm for the world and western society overall. As always, Rose ricochets through touchstones of British culture in this SS24 collection, here focusing on the 1970s and 80s, and with it attempts to form an attack on the immaculate that is in turn attacking this South-Londoner’s city.
"Rose makes the local universal. There is revolution in the ordinary."
Ethan Price
Gaffer-taped knees. T-shirts reading “BLOW YOUR MIND.” A stand-out yellow leather jacket pierced all over with ring-pulls from tinnies, beer bottle tops, safety pins and badges, one reading “lend us a quid.” A preview of two styles (an Oxford and a heeled loafer) from the collection Coming Up Roses by Martine Rose for Clarks from her role as guest creative director of Clarks. And, as always with Rose, there is subversion. Men’s blue checked boxer shorts layered over short tights with unhooked suspenders and knee-high socks. One model was a rumination on the everyman: half sleazy office worker, with open black blazer, half construction worker with hi vis trousers, but styled with this was a smattering of perversion, of life after the nine to five – the shirt is silken, unbuttoned, perhaps a tie has been removed, and over the top of this was a women’s girdle and suspenders. A single, simple accessory – a metallic matchstick as an earring. An outfit that caters to every scenario in this man’s life. Post-work, he lights a cigarette at the club and is ready for the boudoir with whoever he finds in the smoking area. The Martine Rose man is sexy. He’s that bloke that you wish you didn’t find sexy, but you can’t help it. So just give in. He probably parties too much, smokes too much, never answers a call except around 1am. A geezer – perfect, really.