Rains (Q8979)
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Rains is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Rains |
Rains is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Any puffer brand has a baked-in conundrum: Few people, and women least of all, want to look like the Michelin man. Judging by the front-row getups this PFW, ultimately they’d rather freeze.That’s where a brand like Rains has to get creative, which they did this season by staging a presentation in the frigid, hulled-out space once occupied by C&A, just opposite the Printemps flagship. The concept involved 3D printing, a new spin on an ongoing collaboration with Zellerfeld, with biomaterials unspooling into figurines, line after line, as models slicked with shine and piled high in puffers filed in four by four. The meta punchline of it all was that the figurine factory wasn’t pre-programmed: It was churning out live-captured images of the models in the show.Beyond the techy futurism, the event was also a debut for new lead designer Johanne Dindler—an alum of Moncler Genius and Adidas statement collaborations—who produced this collection alongside Rains’s head of design, Tanne Vinter.“The whole challenge is: How does one become an individual in a uniform aesthetic?” Dindler mused following the presentation. “We have to be able to shape things in a beautiful way, by being a puffer but still giving it form,” she added. “The material has a certain weight, so you have to consider drapiness, and it’s also not forgiving so you have to be very precise about the seams.” That last bit is key, because Rains stakes its reputation on waterproofness.Minus the odd showpiece, like an hourglass white number and those skirts, the dozen or so pieces shown here were IRL products presented with a real styling proposition. In this space-agey season, a silver coat struck the right tone and was presented here with an extra hood. Elsewhere, a nebula camo treatment or café crème coats, with a shearling-like finish or layered over a shiny black top, dovetailed with the season’s mood. A couple of sophisticated, big-collared black numbers looked like workhorses for any gender. Now that Rains has staked out its space, it will be interesting to see where it travels next.
19 January 2024
The room–humid to the point of being wet, and wrapped in raw concrete–was as fitting a venue for the Danish label Rains’s spring collection as the torrid weather outside the space’s soaring windows. Exposed support columns leaked rainfall unintentionally. Square panels of milky white light flattened the ambiance, adding to the austerity. It was, as the brand’s head of design Tanne Vinter said, a setting befitting of outerwear created to be “something pure and very honest.”What that meant from a sartorial perspective: Inventive yet slick elemental gear, conceived to evade precipitation but also to sort of celebrate it. Water-repellent textiles appeared, intentionally, as if soaked in water themselves. “Puckered, crinkled, gathered,” read the show notes.The “pure” and “honest” details looked strong throughout: There was a freshness in seeing something as mundane as a raincoat get reinvented with rigor and a conscious lack of splash (despite the references to liquid).A tiered, scarlet coat-slash-cape dress that closed the show was a knockout on the more avant-garde side of things, while a gathered-at-the-hem khaki-hued hooded jacket was the most stylish item by way of simplicity. Tasseled pieces, meant to evoke vertical rainfall, added an editorialized allure but would not be practical in real use.The runway closed with “Singing in the Rain” on the soundtrack as the heavens continued to dump outside. Vinter and co., for the most part, can croon happily.
22 June 2023
Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them wear down-filled, metallic purple onesies topped off with three further puffer jackets and futuristic 3-D printed shoes. Or they do if they’re walking the runway for Rains, the Danish outerwear brand that’s been beefing up its fashion presence since it staged its first catwalk show at Copenhagen Fashion Week in 2020.Founders Philip Lotko, Daniel Brix, and Kenneth Davis couldn’t have had better weather for it: in a frigid Paris that has dropped below freezing this week, snapping show-goers out of their January lull, the down-centric looks seemed especially inviting. But then weatherproof gear is what Rains does best. Founded in 2012, the function-first brand found its niche in rainwear (Copenhagen gets so much rain that it’s currently experimenting with reservoirs in a city park). Turnover in 2022 exceeded €80 million, according to the brand.In a bid to turn international heads, last February Rains appeared on the Paris Fashion Week schedule. Its fall show was a further statement of intent. The brand commandeered the Théatre du Châtelet, the 19th century theater and opera house close to the river, seating the audience on the stage looking out onto the red velvet auditorium. Then, it sent out models in increasingly radical inflated silhouettes to a thumping soundtrack of Missy Elliott. “We’ve kind of seen it all,” shrugged creative director Tanne Vinter, speaking backstage after the show about the choice of location. “I think what was interesting was the contrast between an iconic, grand, classic, almost romantic location, then you merge it into this more urban, city, streetwear vibe.”As for the superhero theme—some models wore mesh breastplates sporting an “R” logo that wouldn’t have looked amiss in a Marvel movie, while others wore dramatic floor-sweeping puffer coats whose arms were extra elongated, Mrs. Incredible style—it evinced enthusiastic response from the assembled cool kids and wannabe Batmen and Catwomen. But as Vinter cautioned: “It’s not about just capturing the superhero, it’s trying to empower the inner hero. We really wanted to bring out some uniforms to create energy and positive forward movement.”Though she acknowledged that most of the looks were only intended as an artistic experiment, those 3-D printed sneakers—part of a collaboration with the German technology company Zellerfeld, which makes shoes out of a spongy recycled TPU material—will go on sale in stores in limited quantities.
“It’s like walking on clouds,” said Vinter, taking her own pair off her feet to demonstrate their lightweight credentials. Sounds like a superpower worth setting an alert for.
19 January 2023