Felipe Oliveira Baptista (Q3121)
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Felipe Oliveira Baptista is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Felipe Oliveira Baptista |
Felipe Oliveira Baptista is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
It's tempting to say that Felipe Oliveira Baptista ventured into the wild this season. And to be sure, there was an exploratory vibe to his latest collection, manifested literally in the nomadic tone of the clothes on the runway. But "wild" would be precisely the wrong word to use in reference to Baptista's effort here; the right one would have to be "rigor." The other way this collection expressed exploration was in Baptista's finicky construction experiments: With military garb as his starting point, he worked a huge number of variations on standard-issue garments like the trench, the jumpsuit, and the flak jacket. Some of those variations looked fresher than others: A long khaki shirtdress with an open vented back was a standout; so was a pale blue minidress with a squared-off top that folded, origamilike, away from the body. Pretty much every coat or jacket Baptista showed was a winner. But even in the weaker looks, you could see the designer's mind working and his ideas progressing. The only place Baptista's rigor really failed him was in his awkward high-waist trousers; plainly put, this was just an ungainly proportion. You could also argue, if you wanted to quibble, that Baptista's approach this season made the collection come off a little, well, academic. But there was just enough sense of romance here to keep that concern at bay.
24 September 2013
Felipe Oliveira Baptista was firing on all cylinders last season, so it wasn't altogether surprising that his new collection elaborated on some of the previous one's themes. There were new iterations of his bonded leathers, and notably, today's show found Baptista furthering his exploration of uniform dressing—numerous mono-colored looks offering a kind of updated suiting proposition. The designer also expanded on last season's emphatic shoulder, constructing a forceful sloped-shoulder silhouette that was a mainstay of the collection and ultimately came off a bit heavy-handed.The best looks saw Baptista operating with a much lighter touch. He had developed a couple of very cool technical materials—iridescent nylon blends—that were deployed with great grace in spare, mid-calf skirts and dresses that seemed to shimmer down the runway. The effect was very arresting. Baptista also turned out several nice variations on men's suiting, such as a crisp black jumpsuit and a black wrap jacket bisected by a plain gray belt. In both those pieces, the designer struck a good balance with his shoulders: They were still strong but not distractingly aggressive. All in all, this collection wasn't quite as dazzling as Baptista's last, but its highlights, especially two glittering mid-calf dresses, were truly singular and breathtaking.
27 February 2013
It would probably have been too obvious to play hip-hop on the runway, even though that music style, along with graffiti, propelled Felipe Oliveira Baptista in such a dynamic direction this season. So much so, in fact, that the word "swagga" appeared in his show notes.This was not, however, an exercise in emulating any one artist, nor in drawing too literally on rhymes or tags. It was, Baptista said after the show, about a creative process that allowed him to "dissect, transform, and put back together."There was all of that and more—specifically, a kinetic interpretation of camouflage that looked as though Baptista had passed an electric current through the pattern and watched it shake. He also shook up his shapes and his palette. The collection began tamely enough with a navy molded-shoulder short-sleeve shirt and men's trouser. The solid army green and white looks that followed foreshadowed the asymmetry to come—but first, a memorable shirt in bonded leather and jersey boasting a flappy placket like a tie spliced in half.Colors arrived as an entourage, dominating the short shifts and unstructured silhouettes. There was no going back. Hemlines became erratic, veering down then curving back up, all in a single skirt. Meanwhile, leather pants based on BMX uniforms were a rare example of pattern symmetry. With all this graphic entropy, Baptista did not forget about fabric. The slickest: a blend of silk and nylon that might have been more impactful without the print (Camo Variation 005, or something like that). A lot of effort went into such deliberate chaos, and the result was fun enough. But Baptista the minimalist is stronger than Baptista the maximalist.As the creative director at Lacoste, Baptista shifts smoothly between the collections, but it's difficult to tell which informs the other. A sporty parka from this collection, minus the chopped and screwed hues, could end up emblazoned with a crocodile next season.But all the slashings and cutouts would not fly at Lacoste. In some instances, Baptista added a printed fishnet underlay that indexed foreground from back. "I liked the idea of showing the body, but not in obvious way. Like innuendo," he explained.Now that sounds a little more like hip-hop.
25 September 2012
You shouldn't have wasted time rooting around under your seat for show notes at Felipe Oliveira Baptista. There weren't any—an intentional omission. "I wanted to try to do something that has its own impact," he explained before the show. "I just wanted to do desirable clothes, well, try to, anyway." If you're a fashion writer who's heard her share of hanging-by-a-thread inspirations, clothes about clothes aren't an altogether bad thing. What might incite pure desire here? Certainly any of the coats in rectangular silhouettes, pieced together with wool, leather—both patent and matte—and shearling, as well as a pair in a luxurious pebbled navy leather that were curiously alluring despite their handbaglike thickness.Not coincidentally, outerwear is this up-and-coming designer's strongest retail category. The show wasn't, however, entirely a reference-free zone. When pressed, Baptista mentioned being moved by the hard lines of communist architecture, andBelle de Jour. And perhaps just a hint of Courrèges, as in the collection he showed just over two weeks ago for Lacoste. Those standaway shapes and graphic pastiches of zebra print and color shards undeniably had a sixties pop and fizz, though perhaps somewhat filtered through the more recent lens of Nicolas Ghesquière. Baptista explained backstage that he finds it exciting to start each season with a blank page. However—although his edgy-sporty voice is starting to emerge—it might be nice to carry over a few lines from season to season in order to resonate more strongly in a city filled with serious fashion.
28 February 2012
"Freedom." That was Felipe Oliveira Baptista's starting point for this season, which he attributed to everything from the Arab Spring to just being plain thankful to have the freedom to do what he does. On the runway, it translated into models breezing by with streaming hair in sporty pull-on dresses and sleek motorcycle pants. Both were punched up with contrast zips, which ran up and down dresses and snaked around legs.Baptista is fresh off a well-received debut at Lacoste, where he was lauded for bringing a whiff of sex to the brand. Those zips not only give a girl the freedom to flare out a sleeve if she likes, but also to show a little skin. It was nothing too overt. "Body-conscious, but nonchalant," Baptista said of the look, though the great pointy and studded ankle-strap pumps brought in a necessary wayward and vaguely bondage-y note.Whether you call it cohesive or one-note, there was a clear concept here, which Baptista evolved in its details. He ramped up with color-blocking in hotter shades like turquoise, coral, and sunny yellow, and by adding gold mesh insets. However, patch pocket epaulets are one idea best left on the studio floor. Perhaps you could chalk the focus up to Oliveira seeking his voice. Sometimes it's hard to put your finger on exactly what he's all about, and you get the feeling he's still sorting it out. Now that he has a bigger stage at Lacoste, that might be a priority. Although as we know, the freedom to flip all that on its head is also, happily, a designer's prerogative.
27 September 2011
Felipe Oliveira Baptista's references for Fall were as far-flung as Nancy Cunard and Cormac McCarthy'sThe Road. "It's very eclectic," said Baptista backstage. "It's kind of a patchwork of different things." His intention may have been haphazard, but in execution the designer's darkly and luxuriously cocooned, eccentric muse was not an entirely implausible creature. Take the first look—the long belted black coat with its buttoned-up neck and storm flaps wouldn't be out of place in a postapocalyptic landscape (not that McCarthy ever envisioned his characters in anything that chic, of course), while the dropped waist and the straight-cut, flapper-esque swing to the hem gave it a hint of the twenties, Cunard's heyday. "I was playing with weights and wools," Baptista further explained. "I wanted to make things that were rigid, very loose and deconstructed."Scarf-wrapped heads and fur hats notwithstanding, the overall sensibility seemed to owe a bit to the minimalism so prevalent last Fall—cue the wide, mannish trousers and smart coats. Baptista in fact scored high on his outerwear here. Most of the fashion flock got to know him with his Spring collection, following the announcement that he would be taking Christophe Lemaire's creative director post at Lacoste. It's comforting to know, then, that he can address cold-weather needs by tailoring an excellent coat, like the ones with cutaway silhouettes. One great idea was a fur-lined hood that when thrown back created a sort of beautiful and dramatic ruff. Curiously, given that he had explored some interesting ideas in his dresses for Spring, today's little black mini versions with panels of sequins were this collection's weakest point. A better evening option: the chiffon sweatshirt with tiny rippling petals, which was paired with skinny blue velvet pants.One caveat: There didn't seem to be much of a continuous vein in Baptista's work from last season to this. You get the sense that he's trying things on for size. Perhaps working on his debut for Lacoste, set for September 10, 2011, will help bring his own work into sharper focus.
1 March 2011
You probably know Felipe Oliveira Baptista best as the designer who scored the Lacoste job recently vacated by Christophe Lemaire, who's now at Hermès. Baptista has been showing on both the Paris ready-to-wear and haute couture schedules for a few years, but today's show, piggybacked onto Dries Van Noten's time slot and venue, likely had a healthy population of the fashion-curious.Appropriately, Baptista's ideas were all about bodies in motion. He seemed to have stripped away some of his conceptual tendencies, for a clean and punchy look that toed the sexy-sporty line. He began with patch-pocket vests and leggings with panels of perforated leather before segueing into more experimental looks with streamlined cutouts and sheer overlays.Results were mixed. A strange peplum belt-cum-miniskirt strapped over a jacket and bodysuit didn't make sense. But then came a complex look that layered a boxy cutout cropped top with a lightly flared and piped skirt over a tube dress; nutty as it sounds, it played quite coherently in its palette of camel, black, and white. The outfits in the second half of the show also required case-by-case judgment, with their trompe l'oeil tuxedo motifs and tailored sherbet-colored organzas. Nevertheless, when Oliveira hit his mark, there was a certain freshly considered, youthful elegance that clued you in to the potential his new bosses have clearly seen.
29 September 2010