Faustine Steinmetz (Q3109)
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Faustine Steinmetz is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Faustine Steinmetz |
Faustine Steinmetz is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
The myth of French-girl style has been propagated for decades, though the Internet has certainly helped to fan the flames. Naturally, Paris-born designer Faustine Steinmetz is well-acquainted with this allusive, soigné creature. She cut her teeth in the haute couture ateliers that service the most well-heeled of those stylish women. Her latest collection sought to dismantle all of the clichés you expect to find in a bourgeois wardrobe and reconstruct them with her own twisted imagination.The trench coat, an item that has been immortalized in French cinema time and time again—Catherine Deneuve inLes Parapluies de Cherbourgsprings to mind—was done over several times, including a version in a crushed metallic fabric that had a rumpled, laissez-faire charm about it. Steinmetz has experimented with the idea of logos in the past, and this season, she splashed her name across several Parisian tropes, blurring the letters on a mohair pencil skirt that paired nicely with a satin blouse covered in the same monogram. Still, her tongue-in-cheek reworkings of the classic Fendi Baguette were hard to beat in that department, especially when they were made out of sparkling Swarovski beads.Ultimately, denim is Steinmetz’s true raison d’être. She’s successfully managed to reinvent the look and feel of the humble jean with each collection. Standard skinnies were revised via hand-felting and knitting techniques, a sort of warm, fuzzy alternative to the ubiquitous ripped and shredded treatment. As cool as they might have appeared on the models, it’s tough to imagine how this cozy fabric would be flattering on a real woman’s curves. Steinmetz has street cast her shows in the past, including Londoners of all shapes and sizes last season, though that body diversity was sadly lacking this season.The classic horse-print silk Hermès scarf, perhaps the most iconic Parisian accessory, was made over as a soft knee-length skirt and slouchy bedazzled tops that stole the show. It would have been nice to see their universally flattering appeal applied more broadly.
19 February 2018
Up until now, Faustine Steinmetz has used art exhibit–style presentations to showcase her work. She set her trademark reworked denim in motion today with her first runway show at London Fashion Week. It was immediately clear, however, that Steinmetz wasn’t going to limit herself to jeans. The Parisian-born designer cut her teeth in the rarefied world of couture, but her fascination with fashion flies closer to the street—this season she was pondering other universal sartorial archetypes. After jeans, track pants are a close second in ubiquity—though some might argue that leggings have overtaken both!—and Steinmetz reinvented them in her own way, with versions that ran the gamut from lightly distressed to a mind-boggling intricate pair that looked like it was spun from Charlotte’s web. She had her name emblazoned up and down the legs of those pants, though her experimentations with logo dressing didn’t end there. Models came out toting ladylike handbags monogrammed with her initials, a cheeky and ingenious subversion of a Fendi baguette—one of the most iconic It bags of the early aughts.Fashion’s obsession with the early aughts has been percolating for awhile now, but if there were any other throwback references here, they were far from literal. Steinmetz is part of a new millennial guard of designers in London taking their first steps toward the runway. Like many of her peers, her point of view is fiercely forward-thinking and original. In addition to chopped-up button-downs and logo tees, there were a series of artfully distressed jeans and denim jackets, a look that also bubbled up at the turn of the millennium. Whether they were layered up with paint or meshed together with thousands upon thousands of tiny trailing cotton strands, the “jeans” she showed were as rare and special as they come. With a diverse casting that included models of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages—’90s modeling star Fran Kohlin made an appearance in a fantastic disheveled trench—Steinmetz grounded her collection in the real world, too. All in all, a thoroughly exemplary runway debut.
19 September 2017
Denim is arguably the most universal fabric on earth: An anthropologist estimates that every day about half of the world’s population puts on a pair of jeans. That fact isn’t lost on designer Faustine Steinmetz, who has been exploring the possibilities of denim with mind-boggling ingenuity for her eponymous label.Her new collection was, as she described it, a celebration of how jeans have been worn all over the planet in the last 30 years. She gave guests at her presentation today a peek inside her process, displaying inspiration pieces she’d sourced from all corners of the globe, including a classic Canadian tuxedo, bedazzled skinny jeans from Bogotá, Colombia, and acid wash denim from Tel Aviv, Israel. As someone who cut her teeth in the haute couture ateliers in Paris with artisans known asles petites mains, the French-born Steinmetz has extraordinary technical know-how and manages to make even the most familiar treatments appear truly sublime. One such example was the denim suit encrusted with thousands of diamanté crystals and left undone with trailing white thread, a very exquisite spin on a frayed hemline. There was a rarefied take on distressing on another denim-on-denim look that featured pulled white yarn loops manipulated to form elegant stripes. Just as awe-inspiring were the hand-pleated shibori dyed jackets with gently round shoulders and subtle drop-crotch pants.Steinmetz is bringing that time-honored, one-of-kind approach to a place that’s both commercially viable and sustainable for Fall. With the help of a women’s craft collective in Burkina Faso, she’s making hand-woven jeans on a large scale—pieces that used to take her a week to make in her studio in East London can be produced on traditional West African looms in a matter of hours. The series includes midi-length denim skirts and jean jackets for both men and women. She’s also working with a mill in Spain that’s specializing in recycled denim to expand her business in an ethical way. It’s certainly impressive to see a young designer charting new fashion territory with such thought and consideration.
18 February 2017
Exquisitely made, recycled denim is whatFaustine Steinmetzfounded her label on, and this season she’s picking up the thread on her jeans in new and awe-inspiring ways. Like some creature from another planet, the first model in her presentation was dusted with what could have been indigo blue kryptonite—60,000 tiny Swarovski crystals, in fact—and had rock formations literally sprouting from the seams of her pants; a cosmic, fashion-forward reimagining of the flashy diamanté-encrusted jeans worn by Paris Hilton in the early aughts. Before she moved to London, the French-born Steinmetz earned her stripes at a fashion school in Paris, and she has the technical know-how to create spellbinding showpieces such as this. The handwoven, hand-dyed cropped ikat jackets and long slit skirts were spun with the same intricate wow factor as the opening look, while still having a sense of ease.Steinmetz’s approach to production is just as time-honored and considered—she plans to work with artisans in Burkina Faso on the hand-dyed textiles. One-of-a-kind craftsmanship like this certainly doesn’t come cheap, which is why she’s thinking about how she can work those sustainable values on a bigger scale, too. Her answer came in the form of monogrammed ombré denim jackets and jeans made from a combination of recycled cotton and polyester. However, it would have been nice to see the clothes in motion rather than exhibited in a museum-like format in low blue lighting. Still, the cool new logo pieces hit a high-low, good-taste-bad-taste sweet spot that felt right, and they’re sure to move off the shop floor in numbers come next spring.
18 September 2016
It takes around 10,000 liters of water to produce the average pair of blue jeans—not to mention a ton of harmful chemicals—a mind-boggling statistic, considering it’s what many people on the planet chose to wear every day.Faustine Steinmetzstarted her label by unpicking the idea of denim quite literally, and is acutely aware of how fashion's food chain functions. As her business begins to grow beyond the confines of her atelier in East London, where the intricate, hand-loomed pieces are made, she’s been thinking about ways she can soften the impact on the environment more and more.Steinmetz worked with sustainable cotton and mohair in lieu of the recycled denim of her debut, and set about making what she called “little sculptures” for Fall 2016. Simple ribbed cotton dresses and cropped flares came with chunky tubular belts and rivets that made it easy for them to be draped around the body in multiple ways; one spellbinding pair of her “jeans” was hand-woven in compact horizontal waves that had the tactile heft of a rug, and took two weeks to make. The rippling, 3-D fabric had a standalone beauty about it, even if the dimensions themselves might be tough for a woman with real curves to pull off. Her hand-woven mohair pieces were equally as tactile, and one fuzzy beige coat cut in the style of an extra long denim jacket had a lot of IRL appeal, as did the fuzzy orange midi skirt.Steinmetz is hoping to have artisans in Senegal pick up the thread where her small production team in London leaves off this season. It's a smart move, given the hand-weaving traditions of the region—and one that gives her time-honored practices a thoughtful new layer.
21 February 2016
Faustine Steinmetzturned the idea of denim inside out with her first collection, and the intricate hand-loomed pieces she created from recycled thrift-store jeans were anything but basic. In her third season, the French designer is looking to grow her business beyond the confines of her atelier in East London. She partnered with a denim mill in Spain for Spring 2016, and the resulting collaboration takes her artisanal sensibilities to exciting and scalable places.Micro-pleated denim is among the new fabric developments in her repertoire (clearly theIssey Miyakeripple effect we saw come through in New York is making waves across the pond, too), and it gave a sculptural dimension to such staples as the jean jacket. To add to her experiments with true blues, Steinmetz took to deconstructing the tracksuit with what she’s calling dévoré jersey; one classic gray marl sweatshirt, in particular, unraveled into a stream of floor-grazing fringing. Her couture-like weaving expertise showed up in the hand of a striped polo shirt, which, like the pieces of her first collection, took a week to make. In an age when supply and demand often takes precedence in the fashion food chain, it’s encouraging to see a young designer picking up the thread of time-honored production values in a modern wardrobe with such spellbinding innovation.
20 September 2015