Egonlab. (Q2188)
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| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Egonlab. |
No description defined |
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Given the global context, there’s a solid case to be made for taking a step back. This season, Egonlab founders Florentin Glémarec and Kevin Nompeix made a measured decision to forego a big runway fandango in favor of a small friends-and-family dinner at the Paris institution Anahi, followed by a showroom presentation.“With everything going on right now, and new challenges in the fashion economy, we just wanted to get back to our roots,” Nompeix offered during a preview. The duo said that punk inspirations—a predominant trend for spring—allowed them to reconnect with the dissent, disenfranchisement and disillusionment that got them excited about fashion in the first place.For the clued-in viewer, the lookbook for the “Notes from Underground” (sic) collection is full of knowing winks. Lennon Gallagher, son of Oasis founder Liam, wears out-there flares and a matching checked-and-striped jacket; BritishVogue’s Tish Weinstock appears in porcelain white and blue armor.“It was about offering something strong for our clientele, to thank them,” the designers said. A manifesto for anti-mainstream freedom, of a sort, came in suiting with cut-outs either at the waist on a strong-shouldered blue and red checked suit with pooling flares, or at the hips, in which case inset boxers kept the look clear of overexposure. Ivy League-style sweatshirts paid homage to Lady Di, and tanks and trompe-l'oeil shirts with crochet floral brooches amped up a feminine vibe. Strong statements included a disco-fab gold lamé shirt, a sweatshirt starring Droopy in a The Cure mode, and soft-washed denim trousers with a clever trompe l'oeil label-slash-discreet card holder that riffed on the most iconic name in jeans. Such magpie borrowings will be catnip to Egonlab’s base. A burgeoning shoe proposition—silver jeweled loafers, square-toed musketeer boots, cowboy mules or striped man-flats—hinted at where the label is headed next.
24 June 2024
This season, Florentin Glémarec and Kévin Nompeix decided to tackle the one addiction that afflicts us all—screen time—and its evil corollary, a sense of belonging in the world (or not). It’s always one post away. “Screens force the younger generations to use filters more and more, which means conforming to canons of beauty imposed by society,” Nompeix explained backstage. “When you look at that closer, you realize that it can be a source of depression for a lot of people.”For that reason, Egonlab this season partnered with Psycom, a public organization that focuses on caring for those with mental health issues. The fall collection, called “Only Lovers Left Alive,” was also an attempt to sound the alarm, he said. “It’s a message of optimism. You have to learn to love yourself before trying to correspond to all these standards.”On the runway, the duo explored dysmorphia and the tension between distortion, tailoring, and draping, with oversized shoulders, slender waists, and fluid details punctuated here and there by chunky metal brooches. “It’s as if the clothes were translating the tortured inner thoughts of its wearer,” Glémarec offered. Some pieces reprised the flat face of a dark screen, as on a glossy black fringed overcoat or trousers.Sparkle, shine, and retro fonts are coming on strong this season, and the duo stepped in with a sharp-looking oxblood overcoat, a checked jacket slicked with sequins and signature patches big enough to still pop on small devices. Likewise, they said their new UGGextreme boots in molded leather were designed to reinforce a message of self-protection.Putting aside for a moment the ongoing conversation around fashion’s power to heal and reinvent, this collection seemed more mature; its proposition was certainly more broadly commercial. But most of all, the designers’ intent seems to be about sharing a personal life lesson: that the process of becoming whomever you want to be means that your own (unfiltered) image is the right one.
18 January 2024
With eight collections (not to mention a cheeky Gucci collab and a nod onEmily in Paris), Egonlab has sealed its place as a brand for the current cultural moment of free agency and self-actualization.For the show, designers Florentin Glémarec and Kevin Nompeix made their point about the power of liberation through a remix by Pablo Bozzi—with an assist from audio tech player Devialet—of “Toute Première Fois” (“Very First Time”), a 1984 Jeanne Mas smash single about pleasure. In terms of dressing (or not), the show notes stated “bodies are blossoming like the flower of evil… break free from conventions and mingle in an endless soirée.” It was some soirée, for sure.On the runway looks embraced “new masculinity” with sharp tailoring, revealing cuts, and an earnest campaign to reinstate the bumster, and not just in its trouser iteration—it might also take the form of cutaway, stud-trimmed jackets that looked tame enough in front but really let loose in back.“We really wanted to deliver a show for our community, which has supported us enormously, and to bring a bit of freshness to a world that’s a little gray right now,” Nompeix said backstage before the show, as Grémarec tended to finishing touches on models. “We’ve always thought of our clothes as tools of expression and that’s also about nudity, and breaking the codes of dress, but without being vulgar,” he added. In any case, in these days of naked dressing, it seems that vulgarity, like beauty, exists only in the eye of the beholder.Beyond the fun of spectacle, the duo noted they wanted to lean in on materials—their first love—and punk-inflected tailoring. Though some pieces owed a serious debt to other designers, there was plenty for fans of every persuasion to get excited about—a fur-collared trench, curve-hugging mesh cardigans, a leather jacket with a layered collar effect, a jacket in crushed chocolate velvet with gigot shoulders.There were other flights of fancy too. The most noteworthy was an asymmetrical bustier in layered, resin-coated leather dipped in chrome that buckled in back. Of that piece, Nompeix said, “We consider fashion an art in its own right, so we wanted to take a step toward a new artistic and cultural level.” It wouldn’t be surprising to see that number, produced with Le Chemin Des Maquettes and Flávio Juán Nùñez, pop up on a red carpet somewhere.
A constellation of other collabs included two key looks in partnership with Umbro China; footwear by Toga Virilis; and arresting jewelry by Persta, a young French brand founded by twin brothers Olivier and Guilhem Faivre d’Arcier. Some of the gem-studded earrings-slash-cockrings spotted on the runway are already available online as of today in celebration of Pride Week.
23 June 2023
The Egonlab collection that’s on its way into stores—as well as the brand’s new e-commerce platform—is all about escapism. But with their fall collection entitled Parasomnia, designers Florentin Glémarec and Kévin Nompeix took a slightly different tack by exploring the surreal and the subconscious, with a lashing of punk and grunge for good measure. It was their most confident show to date.“The world of dreams, nightmares, and fears structure who we are in the waking world, so [this collection] is really a way of extracting from dreams and reinjecting into reality to be the person we’re meant to be. We’re telling young generations not to give up; if there’s no dream there’s no hope,” the duo said backstage before a show that was also dedicated to Vivienne Westwood and René Glémarec, Florentin’s grandfather, a grandfluencer who modeled the brand’s looks at every show.This is men’s fashion week, of course, and Egonlab positions itself as genderless, but this collection skewed more feminine than past outings, a siren song for would-be Timothée Chalamets everywhere. Mutton sleeves were the big news, perhaps paired with lace-up leather biker shorts and military boots. The garter was revisited as a denim skirt over trousers. Short kilt skirts were constructed with attached shirtsleeves. Some trousers were slung so low they made the bumster look prim; here, they arrived below the crotch and were held in place by a bodysuit construction (one assumes those were all in good fun). Throwing in a few belts by Gucci was pretty cheeky, too—and it worked.Many ideas were far from new, however. Fashion loves a slip dress with biker boots, artfully distressed knits, or a chubby (here in holographic tinsel) with black leggings and stilettos. Where the duo really shone was the jackets, with an oversized pea coat in shocking pink, a velvet double-breasted blazer, quilted hooded numbers with contrasting piping, or a velour bomber with argyle knit accents. Anyone who prefers their argyle in black and silver sequins need look no further.Backstage, Nompeix pointed out that “you can self-construct like paintings, and paint yourself in every color, because you’re the sole master of your destiny.” There was plenty of that going on in the audience. Judging by the crowd, Egonlab has hit its stride.
17 January 2023
When the world gets ugly, why not go and create your own reality? For spring, Florentin Glemarec and Kevin Nompeix opted out of the menacing headlines and went for their own little Alice in Wonderland adventure.Guests were greeted with a rainbowed “Egonland” backdrop for pictures with two mascots, a spotted mushroom (minus the Caterpillar), and an eggplant. And, in case anyone missed that gag, a nearby cart offered genitalia-shaped pancakes on sticks, for dipping in chocolate or sprinkles.Backstage before the show, Glemarec remarked, “We wanted to bring Egonlab to the street, not just as an elitist brand, but as a brand that belongs to the world. It’s not interesting to us to do clothes just for windows. We want people to have fun with our clothes.” Judging by the crowd, they’ve found their base.Inclusivity may be Egonlab’s home turf, but despite some workable and even eye-catching pieces—the sharply tailored white overcoat, slit all the way up the back; eyelet trousers, a dusty rose trench, an emerald trouser suit—things got curiouser and curiouser.In the end, what felt most inclusive about this outing was the sight of Glemarec’s grandfather, dressed in full Egonlab regalia—shorts and stripes and all—in the front row. He was beaming.
22 June 2022
Launching a brand on the eve of the Covid pandemic easily could have proved a flash-in-the-pan. Instead, designers Florentin Glemarec and Kevin Nompeix caught traction online with the urban punk-leaning Egonlab (so named for the iconoclastic Viennese artist Egon Schiele). Last fall, they scooped the 2021 Pierre Bergé Andam award. They are also finalists for the 2022 Woolmark Prize. Not bad for a couple of newbies.In the minutes before their runway debut at L’Oratoire du Louvre, the duo said they were more than ready to step out of digital and into the physical realm. A fall collection entitled “Egonimati” was described in their program notes as “a secret society responsible for establishing universal happiness.” That happiness comes, they added, by way of total inclusivity. “We realized that when people speak of inclusivity, they’re really talking about exclusivity,” said Nompeix. “We wanted to show that it takes a bit of everything to create a world.”And indeed there was a little bit of everything in this collection, from oversized, enveloping quilted shirts to a couple of head-to-toe puffer suits and two couture silhouettes, one a dome of a crinolined gown; the other a body-con evening number with a panel rising almost to the model’s chin in front, and a crystal buckle holding together a deep-cut back.But while such showpieces may be visually arresting, the pair really proved their mettle with tailored jackets and discreetly flared trousers (shown here with an overskirt). A lashing of esoterica—most noticeably on tarot-style printed shirts—offered a through line from the archangels in their spring collection. Surrealism, too, made an appearance, in a revisitation of Salvador Dali’s Aphrodite.Physical show aside, Egonlab is playing it both ways, pushing into the metaverse in association with the digital creation studio Cosmic Shelter, and this season in partnership with Crocs: five Swarovski-embellished designs accompanied by NFTs are set to be auctioned off for the next two weeks on their website.
19 January 2022