Sid Neigum (Q9144)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Sid Neigum is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Sid Neigum |
Sid Neigum is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
If Sid Neigum’s collection felt a little darker this season, it’s because the designer has been focusing more on texture and pattern making than color of late. A terminal science geek, he’s also been looking to outer space for inspiration, for example transposing symbols like the starbursts and zigzag motifs engraved on Voyager 1 (launched 46 years ago and currently orbiting the constellation of Ophiuchus) into tattoo-like thread embroidery on a stretch mesh bodice.“It’s as if alien civilizations found the probe and could map out where Earth is located,” the designer said via Zoom from his showroom in Toronto. As it happens, he noted, there is a Golden Record on that space probe: it may be the farthest manmade thing from Earth right now, but you can still find it on Spotify.Which speaks volumes about how granular Neigum can get, and brings us back to that dress. “I was thinking that creating a time capsule as a piece would be interesting in the same way that a space probe is,” he said. Neigum has also been working on taking pleating into a new dimension, using a tessellated mold to craft even more complicated vertical and horizontal pleats to intriguing, waffled effect.Fall included a few new takes on his popular interlocking dresses, which need the tension of the body to come into their own—a process the designer described as “complex to make but fun.” Sheer slip dresses in silk and gold viscose knit nodded to the ’90s revival cropping up pretty much everywhere right now. A stretch velvet mini-dress with an uneven construction—its shoulders appear twisted on the hanger—comes to rights once it’s put on. Slick, shiny sequins turned up on maxi skirts slit up to there or minis, and even the briefest of briefs. In a sexed-up vein, a lace-up grommet corset or skirt could be fastened depending on what the wearer wants to show, but most of all those looked like they were made to be taken off. A sequined bustier dress nodded to this season’s zebra reboot without going literal, instead channeling a wavy, deep-sea organic feel.In terms of tailoring, boxy new looks—among them a shiny fuchsia suit in bonded satin, and a black jacket with a fully functional combination lock closure—pointed to a foray into menswear. There’s a reason for that: this fall Neigum will marry his longtime love, fellow designer Chloé Gordon of the Canadian fashion brand Beaufille.
Each of them is designing their own look, but here’s betting that milestone will trickle down in one way or another.
2 March 2023
For spring, Sid Neigum was all about shine, from the disco ball of a gown to the spiffy and surprisingly weighty real padlocks that could turn a black jersey blazer into a lock-in situation. (Seriously. Fortunately, a key is included).“I like the contrast of grounding a really drapey jersey with hardware,” the designer offered. “It’s almost like it gets too pretty, so I need to add something that gives it an edge.”By contrast, his artfully double box-pleated pieces are now made entirely of recycled ocean plastic. Those caught the light with a soft sheen, fusing statement dressing—in lime, white, or fuchsia-pink-and-red—with high packability.Neigum also revisited his love of transparency, now replacing earlier grids of pearls with small, pointed silver studs, just to shake things up a bit. Elsewhere, a black bow of a top was sheer, structured and stud-free. The result of an experiment with AI imagery, it made a compelling case for elevating horsehair from lining material to red carpet. (“If it were red, you could use it as a gift bow on a car,” the designer quipped.)Neigum’s fans love an artful cut-out, but this season he “got aggressive about it.” During a showroom visit, the racks ran a gamut from a wisp of a white Tension top, paired here with an oversized suit, to a body-con hot orange number with an infinity-shaped peephole, to a fully sequined dress in changeable sunset hues, anchored by one of the designer’s signature triple-loop twists.Concise though it was, this season’s proposition will speak to Neigum’s base. As a young indie with a loyal following, he’s had his fair share of Insta-glory followed by copy woes, so he reckons that staying ahead of the game is the only way forward. Right now, he’s focusing on leveling up. It’ll be interesting to see where that leads.
4 October 2022
It may be a time of upheaval in Canada these days, but Sid Neigum is in recluse mode. Turns out he’s been following the principles of the Cal Newport book Deep Work. By all appearances, tuning out suits him.For fall, Neigum delivered a lineup of sharp-looking pieces in solid black, white, hot pink or yellow. New exercises in pleating yielded half-knife/half-box hybrids in Oeko-Tex polyester. Olive-toned box-pleated pants offered a compelling answer to loungewear (while they looked easy to wear, pleating a pant is no mean feat, Neigum explained). A long-sleeved top with accordion pleats also looked versatile.Occasionally, the designer broke up solids with embroidery, working nearly 400 pearls into a grid pattern on a mesh dress, for example. Elsewhere, strips of fabric undulated across a sheer mesh top; trailing tails gave the pieces an organic feel. Neigum also cut some shirts double-wide, then slashed and reworked the surplus fabric into a fixed bow (shown here in shocking pink). That idea was carried over to a double-knotted, midriff-baring black evening number too.With the mainstreaming of strategic cut-outs, Neigum says he figures the only way to stay ahead is to just run faster. “It’s off the rails at this point,” he said, recounting how in late December a cut-out top of his appeared on HBO’s Insecure and the Insta-sphere did the rest, triggering a thousand new followers overnight and several dozen orders that his two-strong staff scrambled to fulfill.While some of fall’s cut-outs skewed more fashion editorial than real-life, it wouldn’t be surprising to see some—like the deep-V dress in yellow bamboo jersey revealing a disc of bare skin around the navel—gain traction. For the belly-skittish, a layerable faux cardigan top with infinity-symbol hardware looked like a worthy alternative. Also in the workhorse department: a peaked-lapel jacket that ticked all the right boxes.This season Neigum ventured into quilting for the first time, calling it a kind of “bridging over” from his berry-colored trench that Kylie Jenner was photographed in a year or so ago. Pattern and pockets now tweaked, the idea returned in a quilted, waterproof nylon fabric with a matching asymmetrical skirt. Hats off to Neigum for somehow making it look sleek.
24 February 2022
Something funny happened to Sid Neigum during those long months of lockdown: Thanks to a handful of influencers, his Tension cut-out top went viral. Posts showing the likes of Kylie, Lorde, and the Haim sisters wearing that number soon had the designer working overtime. “We were cutting and sewing as the orders came in, first batches of 10, then eventually 25. It’s like we turned into a cut-out top factory,” he quipped during a Zoom interview. For the first time direct sales eclipsed wholesale. Neigum landed a few key international retailers like Luisaviaroma. And he got a chance to reapply that technique to Birkenstocks for Spring.This season’s Loop collection offers a new theme: it might be a long fluorescent green dress anchored by a large coiled knot, a crop top paired with a long skirt, or a long black “triple-loop” dress. (Not shown here are Neigum’s first experiments with bikinis made of recycled nylon).Elsewhere, the designer continues to experiment with the possibilities of pleating. A bias-cut pink top features double knife pleats, for example, and a tailored black evening jacket has mushroom-fine pleats that, on-screen anyway, play like a tribute to Issey Miyake. His biggest statement piece, though, is an evening coat with shimmering pleats and boned sleeves.With this collection Neigum demonstrates that he’s at ease working with today’s two major crosscurrents: the Insta-crowd that wants to flash some skin and the base that craves comfort and coverage. To the latter he’s offering an accordion-pleated top with double-knife-pleated pants and an elastic waist, a minimalist white knit dress in sheer flocked cotton, or a tent-like white shirt. Tailored pieces with tie-on sleeves speak to both sides of the issue.
8 September 2021
In this crazy year, Sid Neigum has branched out. He pivoted to making more than a thousand masks and set about learning how to produce hospital gowns and processes like hydrostatic water-pressure tests. (He now has an approved, functional prototype to hand, should the Canadian government need any.) He also took a deep dive into William MacAskill’s 2015 bookDoing Good Betterand invested in neutralizing this collection’s carbon footprint.An optimist despite the current context, Neigum is also a longtime origami obsessive, which comes through in fabric treatments as well as a first handbag.But first, the clothes. The designer went to town playing with pleats, in lightweight satin or honeycomb jacquard in a versatile palette of black, white, royal blue, burgundy, and marigold. With the help of a specialist at home in Montreal, he worked double box pleats both vertically and horizontally, a technique that gave his fabrics a knitlike aspect. Those and a few horizontal mushroom-pleat numbers will come in handy whenever travel opens up again.Tailored pieces also featured pleated details—for example, a jacket with a knife-pleat panel to one side. Matching trousers were constructed to scale sizewise, a concession to comfort for locked-down waistlines. In a knit section, Neigum decided to flash a bit of skin, constructing one body-con number in stretch grosgrain with triangular cutouts “like a suspension bridge.” A pleated vegan-leather shirt looked more like a shell: protective and highly photogenic. Elsewhere, a dress with cutouts outlining the breasts, cut and heat molded with an assist from a 3D-printing company, was only for the statuesque and the truly, terminally daring.Then he put his origami chops into that handbag, sending some elaborate foldings to Italy to illustrate the kind of shape he wanted. The result is a modular bag in the form of a triambic icosahedron (yes, this reviewer had to look it up)—a statement and a piece for the times.“I’m always looking at what can be fused,” Neigum said. “Turns out there’s lots of room for crossover.” And now that he’s built out his digital content and e-commerce ops, his fans know just where to find him.
21 January 2021
If you’ve never heard of Sid Neigum before, start studying up now. After only just a few years in business, the Toronto-based designer has just put the finishing touches on an armload of looks for a major star. Not that he’s telling—just keep an eye on your feed.Growing up in a tiny town in Alberta, Canada, Neigum first learned his craft from his Polish grandmother, but went on to study science and math before realizing that fashion might be a viable career (“There are no designers where I grew up,” he notes). Science’s loss is fashion’s gain, although the designer did bring with him a certain taste for using the golden ratio (refresh: 1.1618) in his work.Strong items included floral-print dresses made of a single piece then structured in waves with corsetry boning. Elsewhere, the designer brought together four different kinds of eyelet on a dress; upon learning that eyelet first made its appearance in the 16th century, he incorporated other period references into the mix, compellingly in a gold jacquard coat with a finish that looked spot buffed. A number of not-so-basic white shirts and well-cut trousers should appeal to a wide base, and there were various, more daring numbers, such as a long red dress with cutouts at the midriff for those who dare. It’s easy to see why that aforementioned star’s stylist cottoned on.
25 June 2019
Sid Neigum’s latest collection began withEssentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, a book whose central philosophy revolves around paring things back to find the best path forward. The Canadian designer had read a translated quote from German industrial designer Dieter Rams: “Less, but better.” “It changed my life and kind of became the starting point of this collection,” Neigum said.And so, following in Rams’s footsteps, he decided to take Fall 2019 to only one Fashion Week (Paris) and declutter his entire output. (It’s worth noting that Rams also used the Golden Ratio that has so defined Neigum’s work.) After studying a book on couture sewing techniques, he landed on the cartridge pleat as the recurring motif of this slimmer season. “Cartridge pleats are kind of the analog version of the new pleats I started last time,” Neigum said; he worked to intertwine these old and new methods.He cut six meters of fabric to create the elaborate cartridge-pleated cuffs on an abstract tie-dye blouse, for instance; another cartridge pleat ran in ruffles across a bandeau top, which Neigum layered over a ribbed stretch dress with a surprisingly fresh abdominal cut-out. Elsewhere, he showed a bonded wool jacket and skirt with a reflective coating and a boxy turtleneck and floor-length knit dress, basket-woven with thick white and black yarn to add dimension. In the race towards the future, one might think the technical garment would represent the best way forward. Yet the simpler old-world knits were just as nice, if not more. You might call them essentials.
6 March 2019
Sid Neigum launched his Spring 2019 collection with a show in Toronto, and it was quite the hometown affair. Canadian supermodel Tasha Tilberg arrived to open; she also starred in the lookbook, which was shot inside architect Bjarke Ingels’s Serpentine Pavilion. A traveling installation currently set up in Toronto’s downtown, its geometric white fiberglass squares and organic wood floors formed a perfect backdrop for Neigum’s latest designs.As with last season, Neigum continued to work with the architecture that lies at the heart of his label but switched it up with lighter fabrics he chose for Spring. There was a bright blue fil coupe, a first for the designer, turned into an easy ankle-length dress with a ruched collar. It popped nicely against a standout white cotton jacquard, whose stitched pattern resembled a leaf’s vascular lines. Neigum showed an asymmetrical one-shouldered version that used just a single seam down the left side; the rest of its puckered shape came through precise pinning and tucking.Alongside it were sheer red pleated dresses, given sculptural form through the use of wire, and translucent silks with lavender blooms pressed on top. It was nice to see Neigum stretch himself with the use of new lightweight materials. Also new: a hint of suiting, which he is likely to explore more deeply for Fall.
11 September 2018
Sid Neigum’s Resort collection is full of happy departures. “I was really pushing myself to do a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do,” said the Toronto-based designer, gesturing to the rainbow of looks lining the rails. “This really is a lot of color for me,” continued Neigum, who dresses in regulation black and has historically stuck to an inky palette even for spring collections. Here, he took a fil coupe featuring paradisiacal flora and fauna, as well as the occasional toucan, and flipped it, creating wrap skirts and ballet tops, wide pants, and a halter dress by applying the underside of the fabric on the exterior. “It’s much more abstracted this way,” said Neigum, who was drawn to the textile’s sheerness and structured quality as much as its celebratory, carnival tones.The deviation didn’t stop there. There were bright blue checks on a practical, water-resistant trench that would readily double as a dress and a parade of vibrant mandarin jersey and sunshine yellow dresses and two-pieces that showcased Neigum’s twist-and-knot techniques. “For me it was about a very literal interpretation of Resort,” said the designer, whose past life as a mathematics and science scholar still permeates his creations. His fascination with the Golden Ratio, a numerical theory of symmetry found in art, architecture, and throughout the natural world, recurs here in simple separates whose squared-off flounces are composed of giant golden rectangles with spirals cut into them. Striped dresses were ingeniously fashioned from multiple, sometimes identical, patterns. But you don’t need to be a math major to appreciate these experimental clothes.
20 June 2018