Bach Mai (Q3815)
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Bach Mai is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Bach Mai |
Bach Mai is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
This season in New York, many designers have been feeling unusually glum. Backstage, many of the week’s top talents have spoken candidly of looking to fashion for joy and upliftment—especially at a time when tensions are at a high with the coming U.S. election, and the economy continues to falter. Bach Mai, too, has been in that mood. “This last year has been the hardest of my life,” said Mai backstage before his own show. “It’s harder than ever for young designers right now.” For spring, then, Mai desperately needed a mood boost in his studio—and he found his happiness by injecting his signature evening dresses and red carpet gowns with a heavy dose of bright, upbeat colors. “I wanted it to be about clawing through that darkness—there’s not a stitch of black,” said Mai, who shared an inspiration quote from Albert Camus for the season: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”Mai’s sugary color palette for spring certainly could put a smile on the most sour of faces. Referencing the work of artist James Turrell and the Mexican architect Luis Barragán, Mai zeroed in on an evening collection that played with shades of bright reds, oranges, pinks, and seafoam greens. “I love Barragán’s profound use of color, which is bold and subtle at the same time,” he said. The mix was pretty much the fashion equivalent of taking an upper. The brazen hues worked especially well on Mai’s more pared-back designs, like a strapless bodice gown with a cascading tulle skirt in red, pink, and purple; and one of his strongest looks, a gauzy white sleeveless top with a cascading back train, styled over a pale-green micro short—a minty-fresh combo.Many of Mai's gala-ready creations this season served as the his interpretation of American glamour (see: his colorful organza “jeans”), though he also infused elements of mid-century haute couture and traditional Japanese Bijinga art. The problem with doing couture, however, is that things need to be tailored and fit to perfection: some of Mai’s more complicated designs, like his deep-V dresses with swishy pleated skirts, had evident fit problems at the bust. His materials, of course, were as luxe as ever—finished in sumptuous failles, moirés, and satins. “We wanted lightness,” he said, but at times his ambitious cuts distracted from the beautiful materials and colors he chose to make them in.
Some details, like the thick bands across the butt, or the leather gloves, or the ropes tied at the waist, also seemed to be there just to be there. But the maximalism will likely be appreciated by Mai’s growing celebrity clientele (he recently dressed Amal Clooney in Venice). As one head-turning look came after the next, you could easily see them sparking joy at the Oscars or the Emmys.
8 September 2024
In advance of his fall show Bach Mai started documenting his show prep on Instagram, laying bare his struggles to create a collection in a mere 32 days with limited funds. Despite the designer’s good humor, it is a rather harrowing tale, the moral of which might be there’s no substitute for time. Time not only to make and remake garments, but time to have distance from the work and edit and refine it. The clock was not in Mai’s favor this season; his La Dévoyée show was just that, unfortunately misguided, mostly due to a surfeit of ideas.“After last season, which was a very personal collection [it was dedicated to memory of his recently deceased father], I wanted to re-center what I thought my brand was about… and there’s always this idea of a courtesan. I love this idea of the classic with a twist of fetish,” he said. Mai’s interest in transgressive females, who are both powerful and fragile, led him in the direction of Catherine Deneuve inBelle du Jour, a story of a bourgeois woman’s “descent into depravity” as the show notes put it. This character’s influence was evident in the ’60s shapes and the scarf prints. Natalie Portman’s role as a stripper inCloserintroduced shine and fringe into the collection. And Kylie Minogue’sFever-era get-ups influenced the fringed ribbon top that was part of the first look and the folded ribbon pieces, which veered into Tom Ford at Gucci territory (as did some of the skirts with semi-sheer insets). All this seemed to distract Mai from his passion for couture, which was most evident in his signature dresses in the end.The beauty of some of the fabrics was undeniable. This is the first season the brand has shown coats, and one in a silver tinsel by Hurel, one of Mai’s backers, was especially effective, as was its opposite, made up in a garment-dyed washed nylon. Elements of Mai’s popular bomber were nicely applied to the jacket of a teal evening pantsuit to great effect, the pants in the second look were well cut, and the “X-ray” floral (on the back of the opening look) were well done. Elsewhere, some of the shine effects were stunning, but that seems at odds with the designer’s stated goal.“I want to give louche,” he declared on Instagram (meaning something sordid but nevertheless intriguing), yet all previous evidence suggests the designer is more closely aligned with two other L-words, luxe and liberality. Said Mai: “We have been the most diverse show in New York two seasons in a row, and we are hoping for a third.
” With hope, next season he will have more time to work through these contradictions
10 February 2024
“Fall 2023 was the season of the gesture,”wrotemy colleague José Criales-Unzueta in his analysis of the choreography of codified movements. Bach Mai was also interested in this subject. He built these human expressions into clothes in order to show that they can hold our bodies, carry emotion, and, as he put it, “preserve gesture”: the hand in the pocket, the lifting of the skirt, the grasping of the heart.The heart—that’s straight where this collection came from. Mai recently lost his beloved father, and this runway show, his first, combined aspects of memorial and celebration. A lotus-flower print, a symbol of rebirth, was used throughout. The live classical Spanish guitar was a reference to Mr. Mai Sr.’s preferred music. The workwear elements that appeared throughout—including webbing, buckles, and cargo pockets—referenced his wardrobe. They appeared both on the evening looks the designer is known for and more casual ones, like fitted sheaths that fell above the knee. A midriff shirt paired with a curve-cut skirt with circular snaps sizzled. A different mood was evoked by Mai’s interpretation of the Vietnamese ao dai, “the only national dress for women with pants,” he noted.Steeped in fashion history, Mai incorporated a Cristóbal Balenciaga reference in the trailing back of a floor-length ivory tunic, open at the side and secured with a belt underneath, worn over pants. This look, one of clean-line purity, was followed by another with a beautiful floral halter top. There was something angelic about it, and you’d never guess its origin was the wilted flowers of funeral bouquets.There’s a connection to be made between the way the designer cradles his father in his heart and the way he manipulated fabric by hand to gather and capture the life of cloth on a body. The collection progressed from dark to light, and the first and last looks had the airiness of a parachute, a lifesaving device, which here promised a soft landing. Clearly Mr. Mai was the wind beneath his son’s wings.
12 September 2023
Women’s anger is a touchy subject, one that unexpectedly surfaced, in completely different ways, at Elena Velez and at Bach Mai’s Cave of the Sirens presentation. Usually three makes a trend, but as “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” let’s say the intensity fills in for the volume.Mai, still new on the scene, is developing in public, and as with last season, he didn’t play it safe. For fall, he set aside his signature volante silhouette in favor of something new, “a very undulating siren shape as opposed to the cupcake for so long,” as the designer put it. Mai emphasized this shift to the more sensual and womanly by showing his clothes on models in the size 4-12 range, making him one of the few designers to commit to body diversity in New York this season.You could see this choice as an extension of the premise for the show; Mai imagined shafts of light penetrating a sea cave, “Darkness pierced. Sirens’… wrath veiled in fragility” as he put it in the show notes. This wasn’t exactly mermaid core; as the designer noted, sirens lure sailors to their death. Still, shimmery moirés and sequins in turquoise were printed with a sea-themed print, and contrasted with black. Though Mai was playing with transparencies and overlays, the moodiness of the palette created a feeling of heaviness, or dampness as the case may be. Among the more buoyant looks was the finale gown with two “fins” framing an opening that exposed the inner corsetry. Mai attributed this interest in showing constriction to his training at Maison Margiela. “Obviously it’s something that John Galliano does all the time, so it’s kind of built into my own DNA a bit,” he said. The motive behind doing so is unique to his brand, part of “our journey to exalt craftsmanship, especially American craftsmanship,” said Mai. The workmanship here was beautiful, precocious even. The beading on a sleeveless jacket had a coral-like intricacy. What looked like devoré fabrics were jacquards with abstract geometric lines of transparency.The sunken treasure in this collection was an homage to Karl Lagerfeld. It was found in the LBDs and the strapless bell shaped tunics over long, stem-like skirts. “I grew up loving Karl Lagerfeld and what he was doing for couture and at Chanel was so impactful,” said Mai, a keen student of fashion history. “So this collection really is a study in this nostalgia of Lagerfeldian things filtered through my creative universe.” Consider this a heads-up for Costume Institute invitees.
14 February 2023
While masks might be reappearing on the streets and subways of New York City, social distancing seems to be mostly a thing of the past. At the same time, clothes are getting closer to the body. There might not be a direct correlation there, but as we tracked in the spring trend report, designers are starting to turn away from the naked look and towards a second-skin goddess aesthetic. For pre-fall Bach Mai explored just that.In Mai’s pantheon of designers, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Madeleine Vionnet loom large. The sculptural volante dresses this young designer has become known for borrow asymmetry and volume from Balenciaga. This season he’s found ways to make the dresses lighter materially (by eliminating some of the support materials) and visually (by using sheer fabrics for mini versions that float over abbreviated lingerie dresses or slim skirts.The most ethereal designs in the collection however are those inspired by Vionnet. Mai, who worked alongside Galliano, returned to the bias cut here and came up with dresses as weighless as ghosts. Many of them are made of one spiraling piece of fabric and added straps. Those made from a black jacquard velvet on chiffon have a cobwebby gothic feeling, while Mai evoked a “picnic” vibe with his “live plaid” dresses, partly inspired by the swirling glass work of Lino Tagliapietra. These are made by over layering bias-cut striped fabrics. The “plaid” is an illusion created by their intersection.Another of Mai’s pre-fall storylines came from “The Tudors” exhibition at the Met, from which the designer developed Elizabethan-style corset tops which look like sure hits. More interpretive is the “block upon legs” silhouette Mai based off of Henry VIII’s stance, and which took the form of a pearl-embroidered mini mantle worn with long, side-snap basketball shorts. It’s exciting to see this kind of challenging proportion play alongside the more obvious slam-dunk designs like the corset tops.It’s probably easier to play it safe when you are building a business, but Mai likes to change things up a bit every season. He reports that spring’s wide-leg pants are selling well, while his Balenciaga-inspired bomber jackets, seeming outliers in an evening wear collection, are catching customers’ fancies.
19 December 2022
Fern Mallis once joked that she wanted to do a book about grandmothers because designers cite their nanas as inspiration more than any other relative—a fact I can verify. That’s not the case for Bach Mai, however; his spring show was inspired by his father, whose hard work at an oil refinery in Texas made a career in fashion possible for his son. “I thought a lot about his sacrifice and how he wore blues to work everyday. He wore these blue coveralls—that’s where the term ‘blue collar’ comes from,” said Mai, whose blue hair complemented his collection.Spring marks the first time that Mai has shown his work on models, and he took a strong position when it came to his first casting. “I wanted to do the best we could to show diversity,” he said. “We had curve girls, we had mid-size girls… a whole range to show that my version of glamour is for everyone.”Mai has made no secret of his admiration of Cristóbal Balenciaga, whose asymmetric dresses inform Mai’s best-selling full-skirted styles (Martin Margiela is another of his idols). But for spring, Mai found inspiration in the trapeze line Yves Saint Laurent introduced at Christian Dior in 1958. This season, the designer said, was “all about shape.”Baby-doll styles already do well for the brand, and Mai iterated on already popular styles while adding new ones. It took many tries, he said, but he finally got the placement of a pleat on trapeze-legged evening pants just right. And right on time, too: more celebrities are opting for trousers on the red carpet.Bias-cutting, especially for ’90s nostalgic slip dresses, has been popular this week; in line with his idea of creating airier shapes, Mai used bias for a different purpose, creating slip shapes that draped, rather than clung. To these he added a dramatic sheer insert to reveal the leg, which was a felicitous, graphic touch with a bit of sizzle. Overall, his use of sheer and floaty fabrics was better balanced than in the past.As Mai works in partnership with the French textile house Hurel, he has access to amazing fabrics, like a metallic moire, meant to recall steel, and a technical organza that Mai said reminded him of an oil spill. These metallics were convincing; the shiny “newborn alien” makeup distracting.Along with the trapeze shape, blue was a major through-line here. Mai’s father’s workwear was made of fire retardant twill, and the designer made his voluminous party dress in twill.
He also made good use of a blue-and white tweed, especially when he gave weight to a sheet dress with the addition of tweed rosettes near the hem, which was an unexpected but effective contrast.
13 September 2022
Bach Mai is experiencing a lot of firsts. Having acquired a skeleton staff, he’s no longer working alone, and within a few weeks his clothes will start hitting the sales floor. That’s pretty heady stuff, but the designer’s not getting ahead of himself artistically; his resort collection was created to complement his fall line, with which it will sit. Consistency is important at this stage, as the designer is refining his vision, and familiarizing people with the brand values.Mai described this collection as being a “juxtaposition between expressive modernism and romanticism,” a description that suits his body of work so far. The brand is backed by the French textile company Hurel, and so far, shape and fabrics are the designer’s prime preoccupations, along with the bias cutting he learned while working with John Galliano in Paris. For resort it’s applied to dresses with raised Regency waistlines. These form fitting numbers have toggles threaded on fine “threads” at the back, which beautifully define the spine and allow the wearer to adjust the dress to best suit her figure.New for the season was sonorous embroidery of ombre plastic that shimmers and moves. The Lady of the Lake, a mythic enchantress, inspired this handicraft; in contrast, tony tennis clubs were one of the references behind the short shorts and the shaped kimono-bomber jackets that Mai offered to bring a bit of drama to less dressy outings, like a trip to the grocery store or after-work drinks. (He wore one to the collection walk-through.)Those looking for the sculptured volant dress, which has already become the designer’s signature look, will not be disappointed. It comes in a babydoll silhouette this season as well as longer versions with asymmetric hems, à la the designer’s idol, Cristóbal Balenciaga. These are the best examples of the “couture spirit” that Mai wants his designs to have. The designer fell in love with the metier at a young age, but his dream, which he is starting to realize, was to bring Parisian savoir faire back to America. He’d also like to work closely with his clients and is looking forward to his first trunk show. That personal approach, something that Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta excelled at, seems to be a good fit for this occasion-driven brand.
22 June 2022
Born in the Lone Star State, Bach Mai is a New York–based designer who trained in Paris with John Galliano and aspires to be nothing less than an American couturier in the tradition of Charles James. Though new to the scene, the young creator—backed by the French textile firm Hurel—has made a splash with asymmetric dresses with puffed petaled skirts that combine glamour with lightness. These were back for spring, rendered in ombré strips of hand-torn chiffon in shades of red inspired by a 2007 exhibition of Cy Twombly’s paintings.Mai is still in the process of establishing his own signatures, but he certainly has an eye for color. Like his mentor, Mai is partial to a bias-cut slip dress and a bit of see-through construction. Mixed in among the big-drama looks for fall were dressy separates, like leather bras and vests with kimono details. The latter were paired with tailored jackets made of a clear Lurex velvet that looked like liquid metal. So delicate was this fabric that it made some of the designs (at least when viewed on mannequins) look tenuous, as if they might disappear at the break of day. In contrast, the pouf dresses—for all their bounce and airiness—confidently took up space.
16 February 2022