Isabel Marant’s AW21 collection – which has just been released into stores – was first shown in the depths of the second lockdown in February. Back then in the bleak and cold months of the winter we were all dreaming of escape, a brighter future, willing some optimism into being. To debut the collection Isabel Marant took us to a huge brutalist car park on the outskirts of Paris and pumped it full of techno music, enlisted the services of the superest of super models, and presented a collection designed in response to the ever-changeable and often-terrifying moment we were living through. Creative responses have always bloomed from times of trouble and uncertainty. Isabel Marant’s latest collection for AW21 being a case in point.
Across a career spanning almost thirty years in fashion, Isabel Marant has built one of the industry’s most recognisable and loved brands, her signature is more philosophical than simply aesthetic; it is based on ease, reality, sincerity, comfort, elevation. And that all bled into this collection, which was designed for these uncertain times without wallowing in them; stuck half way between freedom and restriction, Isabel looked to both the past and future as balms for that present.
It looked to the escapism of music, to countercultures and subcultures from the past, and to the handmade and handcrafted, as small pleasures, moments of reprieve and beauty in a difficult present. It looked to the jolt of excitement of futurism. But it was not just a simplistic proposition, of fashion as escapism, but a way of finding joy in what we wear: simple pleasures are very important ones, something which Isabel Marant also understands. The commanding presence of leather trousers, or cowboy boots, a dramatic shoulder, for example, or a flash of pink, the cosiness of jersey.
Prints and embellishments were one of the highlights of the collects, paisleys and florals evoked the flamboyant freedoms of the swinging sixties, while elsewhere it looked to the dark energy of 90s techno and gabber. This mixture, too, has always been at the heart of Isabel Marant, which has always looked to the balance of contrasts – high and low, minimalism and extravagance, day and night, masculine and feminine – because Isabel has always understood the need to create a complete wardrobe, a timeless garment, not just pieces to be worn once but to be lived in.
Which is exactly what we need during these months, stuck between lockdown and reopening, between despair and hope. We can always use an embroidered bolero, a pair of cowboy boots, a cosy sweater.
