Mandy Coon (Q3273)
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Mandy Coon is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Mandy Coon |
Mandy Coon is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
By her own admission, the foundation of Mandy Coon's Spring collection was "pretty nerdy." That's how the designer described it before her show, as she explained how a discussion of MIDI files—the way electronic instruments and computers talk to each other—got her thinking about incorporating a file's digital pattern into a print. Pontus Winnberg of Miike Snow stepped up to make Coon a special track, and the designer turned the file's data into a laser-cut pattern and a graphic print. Backstories don't get much cooler than that, but the jump from MIDI file to runway collection is long enough that it was virtually impossible to see the music in the clothes. The prints most closely resembled a Rorschach test, and the laser cuts looked a bit like tiles in a Tetris game. But that's not a criticism. Consider Coon's collection the antithesis to the piano key necktie.Back to the clothes. The primarily black and white, leather-heavy collection was darkly romantic, with bodice-crossing straps, zipper detailing, and belt-slash-harnesses providing a bondage feel. In a field of short dresses, a few long silhouettes made an impact. A deep purple column with a keyhole cutout in the back—a recurring motif—had a sly smattering of cutouts on one leg. It was just as sexy, if not more so, than a sheer, thigh-skimming shirtdress with stamped lambskin lapels. That stamped lambskin looked like python and was used well throughout. A simple tank dress in the stuff was sporty and chic. Coon described the track Winnberg made for her as "melancholic but optimistic." Her clothes, broody but not too serious, struck the same chord.
10 September 2012
Mandy Coon loves bats, so much so that she was delighted to find them in her hotel—a renovated Spanish colonial—on a recent vacation to Nicaragua. The country's flora and fauna provided the inspiration for Fall, and the collection's sole print was derived from the pattern on a moth's wings.In her showroom, Coon explained that her cold-weather collections always have a dose of Man Ray and Helmut Newton, too. That came through in the nipped waists and slightly roomy pleated pants. Pleats were a recurring motif. A short navy circle skirt with a panel of black leather pleats was sexy and fun, the best kind of take on naughty schoolgirl. The moth wing print had a kaleidoscope effect on a paneled stretch and knit wool dress; worn with a detachable peplum (a no-brainer accessory) it narrowed the frame and added length—good things, most wearers would agree. When it came to positives, the collection was full of them.
15 February 2012
For Mandy Coon, adding more color to her collections, which are often on the dark side, is admittedly a challenge. "I always want to wear black," the designer explained backstage before her runway show this morning. This season, Coon added "a lot more white, which is a color in and of itself, in my opinion," she said. The result was a refreshingly lighter lineup that still maintained the designer's edgy aesthetic. (Bonus: Coon gives each piece a cool name, as if it were a song on an album.) Coon's close friend Jamie Bochert opened the show in a cobalt Rong Hands top and Smokescreen skirt that combined tough leather with fluttering sheets of accordion pleat chiffon. Other notable leather looks here included the I Feel Voxish culotte shorts, which had panels of striated silk at the sides, and Helter Skelter pants with cutouts and buckles up the shin. Those, along with a few of the all-white looks—like Bochert's finale Spellbound ensemble—should be an editorial hit with some of the in-demand stylists who were sitting in the front row.
8 September 2011
At first blush, Mandy Coon's Fall collection would seem to have been designed by Bizarro Mandy Coon, recently arrived from the planet Discipline. Looking at the severe silhouettes—in particular, the collection's high-waisted black wool trousers, tailored wrap jackets, and stiff, full skirts—you had to wonder what happened to the Coon of yore, the one with the crazy rave prints, tendril hems, and bags shaped like rabbits. But if that designer was hard to see in this impressive if stern outing, she wasn't impossible to find. Coon has always had a strong sense of line, which she emphasized this time out, but she also remains a lively surrealist. To wit, her tuxedo-tailed pencil dress, which was festooned with a wildly oversized leather bow, and the giant backpack, made of leather stamped to look like python.Coon also made Dada-esque use of faux fur: Though a wool wrap jacket lined with that material and sporting a large fur collar was wearably glamorous, a coat-dress in leather and fur struck a more comic note. (It seemed silly to imagine the garment as a dress, until you put it in the context of the current blustery winter, in which light a faux-fur dress seemed like a good solution to a tiresome problem; i.e., being cold.) Other looks were more conventionally "fun"—short, tailored dresses with leather-tipped dirndl skirts; a baggy, hooded leather bomber lined (again) in faux fur—but the focus was squarely on soigné, grown-up clothes. Though some of the mishmash and casual aplomb of Coon's previous outings was missed here, the designer proved her range, taking confident command of a formal tone.
11 February 2011
Jellyfish. That, Mandy Coon explained, was the rather eccentric inspiration for her Spring collection—an outing that ought to firmly establish her as one of New York's key designers to watch. Still, Coon wasn't overly literal about the invertebrate reference; although there was a rave-colored jellyfish print on a couple of dresses, and leather tubing, used as both jewelry and belt, that was jellyfish-esque, it was more about the suggestive way tendrils of thread hung off her occasionally unfinished hems. In general, Coon seemed to treat her theme as a springboard, and then let whatever other ideas she came up with ping-pong around in her head while she was developing the collection.That's a good strategy for her. Coon is settling into a few design signatures, such as vivid prints, asymmetric trapeze shapes, and a certain diaphanous quality, seen here in panels of sheer fabric drifting off to one or both sides of several garments. But what's especially appealing about Coon is her willingness to be ad hoc. You can practically watch the creative process unfold on her clothes. What if this black dress had some of that jellyfish fabric hanging off one side? What if we put burlap with chiffon, or burlap with leather? What if those shorts were super-poufy? (Come to think of it, that pouf was a little jellyfish-esque, too.) Several Spring items, one suspects, were made simply because a certain material came to hand, or a certain color caught Coon's eye; this was the sense one got from looking at the draped, floor-length dress in slick, reddish coral jersey. Maybe that coral color links back to the jellyfish theme—coral reefs and so on—or maybe not. It doesn't matter, because what really tied this collection together, even the few pieces that could perhaps have been edited out for the runway, was the force of Coon's personality. She has the confidence to improvise, and the discipline to know when to stop.
8 September 2010