Nicopanda (Q3511)
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Nicopanda is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Nicopanda |
Nicopanda is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2011
creative director
Y2K anxiety apart, this was an authentic, fun, and light-as-a-feather evocation of party culture circa 1999, all mixed up for now. Nicola Formichetti and his Nicopanda crew loosely looked to the last days of last-century analog hedonism as source material for a collection that was long on convincing back-in-the-day details. The velour one-shoulder catsuits with vaguely Lady Miss Kier–ruched kicks at the ankle, the fishnet dresses, the dance-floor Stetsons and devil horns, plus the pre-athleisure cycling suits and Lycra shorts were all as cheerily, cheesily way-back-when as the sped-up mix of “Spice Up Your Life” on the sound system.Monotone check tracksuits with animalia paneling; a leopard-print sports short and blouson two-piece; a purple-tinted leopard print full look of shirt, baggy pants, and jacket; and a dull-at-first gray jersey tracksuit redeemed by the wild abandon of pockets on its pants were some of the key menswear pieces. A “Greased Lightning”–esque decal flame pattern—alsoun peuPrada—licked across a short jacket, ruffled pants, and tube socks.AnarchyAtees were shown unironically alongside a capsule of just-for-Amazon tees designed by Hilton Dresden. Another more poignant subplot here was the capsule created in collaboration with the estate of Divine—aka Harris Glenn Milstead—featuring Polaroids from its archive on ruffled bad princess dresses and hoodies. The finale soundtrack mash-up of Kim Petras’s “Heart to Break” over Basement Jaxx’s “Where’s Your Head At” was a perfect reflection of the bangingly effective, then-and-now, nonbinary finery proposed in this efficiently hedonistic collection.
14 September 2018
If Nicola Formichetti was a DJ—and hey, maybe he is on the side—his nights would make for proper floor-filling fun. This collection featured a playlist of logos, motifs, and references. Just like the soundtrack, it was an adroit mix of back-to-the-’90s crowd-pleasers. As that soundtrack clashed the Breeders with Lil’ Kim and Nirvana with Deee-Lite, Formichetti’s garments played cut and paste in harmony.A tie-up with Tommy Boy allowed him to use the label’s three-silhouette logo on black bombers, sweats, hoodies, and check tracksuits. A tie-up with whoever owns the right to Nirvana’s imagery allowed him to use the band’s stoned smiley (in a Nicopanda-fied remix) on black tulle-sleeved tees, hoodies, leggings, and skirts. Buffalo check dresses played against Kurt 101 striped sweaters that looked partially realized in corduroy. Bucket hats and beanies were the North, and brightly colored semi-fugly sneakers—’90s ACG-ish—the South. There was a local’s conversation going via the tourist tees, which looked to feature the masthead ofNew York Magazine, and the Queens tracksuits and sweats. These lead slightly ponderously on to a Queens section: RuPaul on the soundtrack, and some serious runway sashay.Life changing? God, no. But, as mentioned at the top, pretty fun. Added bonus: All that plaid just prompted me to dig out a Triple Five Soul jacket I bought with summer-job money back in 1993. Geez, they cut baggy back then.
19 February 2018
Hey, Jeff Bezos: We all love what you’ve done withWaPo—awesome!—and, frankly, your company makes my life easier. But not tonight, Jeff,not tonight.Nicola Formichetti’s first London Fashion Week collection with his label, Nicopanda, was a “see-now-Prime-now” collaboration with Amazon, which, if you ordered as the models walked, you might be wearing even as I write this four hours after the show. Seriously sexy logistics aside, the collection was fun. Formichetti went for a concept based on the notion of high school cliques. It started with jocks (boo!), and some very Adidas-esque twisted trackies with two lines of ruffle running down the arms, legs, and sports bras of this coed cast. Cozette McCreery of the much missed Sibling was at the show, and as a buff guy in a Formichetti logo sweat and some ruffled budgie smugglers strutted by, it was hard not to think wistfully of all the wonderful shows that label gave us. The next clique was punk-naif (yay!), and we saw girls in Kangol berets studded with Judy Blame-ish adornment and knitwear with badges, one of which pinged off and bounced into the audience.After that, the cliques unraveled a bit. A girl in a hemmed rugby shirt carried a fidget spinner. Guys in hoodies and Lycra cycling shorts peppered with the panda-face silhouette toted Nicopanda-taped brown boxes as if they were working a particularly fabulous Amazon warehouse. So yeah, it was fun. But that fun wasn’t enough to assuage the roiling anxiety of knowing we had to get across town to Burberry very, very, fast. So next time, Jeff, can you drone us out of there? Or just do this at another time? Thanks.
16 September 2017
For Fall, Nicola Formichetti steered his Nicopanda line “back to its roots.” “We’re rearranging the vibe,” said the multitasking designer. (He’s also the creative director of the denim giant Diesel, as well as a stylist.) “Think less fashion, and more street.”In Formichetti’s able grip, the “street” felt crisp and on the right side of funky with this collection. For women, see scarlet tulle ball skirts, pillowy puffers the color of cotton candy, major ruffle-trimmed blanket scarves, one-fingered gloves (the middle finger, as it happened, which he called “fuck you gloves”), and varsity jackets with “Nicoboy” lettered across the back. Regarding the latter, Formichetti said, while flashing a smile: “That idea goes back to the 1980s, when I was a little Nico-boy in Japan.” Menswear, too, appeared—more puffers, lo-fi printed tees, hoodies, another gigantic scarf that said “Save the Pandas,” et al. (To note, most of the pieces were gender interchangeable.)A simplified primary palette of black, white, pink, red, and bright blue helped push Formichetti’s focus back to square one; this was a Nicopanda trimmed, for the most part, of the OTT. But, as we all know by now, this creator's version of basics are anything but; you’re still getting something special and unconventional. Good stuff, all around.
11 February 2017
“Nicopanda is a hybrid of street culture from Japan, New York, London . . .” said the label’s Nicola Formichetti this afternoon. “But this collection is especially Japanese, ’80s-era Tokyo, and a mix of vintage-inspired clothing with things that are a little bit over the top.” Kaleidoscopically OTT (and unisex) it was, and the presentation succeeded in most cases, banking on the ongoing popularity of what we’ll call “meme dressing”—the sort of subversive, Internet-fueled clothing language popularized by the Mileys, the Baddie Winkles, and the @weed_slut_420s of the world and all their fellow social media transgressors. In essence, these are clothes with a current of sex, eddies of freakiness, and waves of look-at-me eccentricity. “My tribe of pandas . . . they’re very different,” said Formichetti.When taken apart, though, certain elements of Nicopanda are wearable in an everyday kind of way. Formichetti turned out a great version of a bomber jacket with big ribbon tags at the sleeve-pocket zipper—possibly the trendiest thing right now, given Alpha Industries’s celeb-favored edition, et al. Another highlight was a hoodie with flocked velvet hearts. Glitterized mackintosh coats will be harder in regard to mainstream appeal, but they’ll no doubt find their takers. There were also a few noteworthy news items today: a shoe collaboration with the label Metal Gienchi (velvet-wrapped creepers, they were actually pretty cool); a harness collaboration with the fetish brand Nasty Pig; and a brand-new dedicated accessories line called Nicopanda World, consisting mainly of panda-motif bags and key chains. “That’s going to be our game-changer,” said the designer.
17 February 2016