Todd Lynn (Q9346)
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Todd Lynn is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Todd Lynn |
Todd Lynn is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
It's hard to look fondly upon a designer whose show is so late that you miss the next presentation and who then conspires to have his audience depart half-deafened with tinnitus. But Todd Lynn's sincerity comes through just as clearly as his very loud guest band, Slaves, did tonight. This pre-fall presentation for women was dropped amidst a Fall '15 menswear collection. That mash-up was appropriate, because most of the looks, after a nip and a tuck, would be wearable on either gender. The point with Lynn, though, is that it's not your gender but your sensibility that defines your readiness to wear his clothes. And Lynn's type—exemplified by longtime client PJ Harvey, who lurked in his audience—is anything but mainstream.His men and women wore big, bobbed, brunette identi-wigs over slim black trenches and suiting that jiggled with fringing down each sleeve and had chains at the pockets. There were sheepskin vests and reversible jersey-knit tunics-cum-smocks. Models of both genders slipped in their Louboutin Beatle boots—someone forgot to hairspray the soles—but found sounder traction on color-touched elastic-tied sneakers. Green tailoring, blue sheepskin vests, scarlet shoes, and bikers with collars of more blue broke up the mono. "I love you more when you're angry because you're so boring when you're nice," bellowed Slaves. This was a purist's collection for the edgier RTW customer, and it danced to a certain music all of its own.
10 January 2015
Todd Lynn opted to hold his show at The Box, a small, cabaret-style Soho club bathed in red light that bills itself as a "Theatre of Varieties." The space does not allow for too many guests, nor did the designer get carried away with too many looks—a lean twenty-four, to be exact. It's one of those unofficial laws of nature that when you force yourself to reduce, every decision matters more. Lynn has always been seduced by clashing masculine and feminine, and the results played out sharply, with bra cups inserted into suiting and a tailored coat ringed from the hips in a wraparound of fluid pleating. He gushed over Berlin-based artist Jonas Burgert's focus on civilization's end time—which didn't necessarily offer much explanation for the removable, zippered funnel belts, but helped paint the picture of a fatalist femme fatale. Certainly, she could draw from a selection of killer coats, the best revealing a vent filled in with inverted pleats.To hear Lynn tell the story about how his studio sent Saga Furs a sample of white fox defiled by green highlighter is to realize that his spin on goth is birthed from ingenuity, not darkness. And the confidence he shows with specialty surface treatments—from slim liquid silver suiting and a billowy anthracite skirt paired over pants to papery leather treated with a resin—is precisely what will continue to attract music artists and directional shoppers to his label.Lynn continues to work with Christian Louboutin on footwear (and Gary Powell of the Libertines on music); with this latest cinched boot—consistent throughout the show, differing only in heel height—he should prepare himself for an expanded fan base next season. It's about time.
13 February 2014
Hang on—what happened over the summer? Did Todd Lynn enroll in a refresher course? Because what else could explain the sudden raising of his game after some seven years in the biz? To be fair, for the bulk of the past decade the Canadian-born, London-based designer has been busy outfitting the best of rock 'n' roll—including Fergie and Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna, and Ronnie Wood—for the stage. But since his show last February, he's added to his signature styling with the inclusion of more tailored, precise, and, well, fresh looks—a word not usually associated with rock.Of note were the elevated PJs in soft, stripey hues of green grass and creamy milk. Over the last couple of seasons, we've seen plenty of pajamas on the runway; what makes Lynn's special is how sharp they are—less dreamtime, more daywear. Backstage he said they were "based on the lining of men's suit tailoring, so kind of turned inside out—perfect for the work environment and, OK, less the stage."Cobweb-lace looks were also a key theme, not just in black but in that fresh grass green again. Shimmery dresses with clever draping and some astonishingly cut tuxedo suits with raw, deconstructed edges proved that Lynn has moved on, but not too far. A performance by the band Wolf Alice was a loud reminder of his design roots.
12 September 2013
New York's Gopher Gang was the 1890s version of today's smash and grab hoodies: recidivists who steal clothes not to resell (the preferred method of today's crooks) but to retool to fit their bodies. A gang of thugs, yes, but at least a fashion-savvy one. They were a reference, alongside the antebellum era, for Todd Lynn's fashion week outing.Lynn's opening gambit was a dove gray suit that was true to both his inspirations. Any of the characters lounging around in the mansion of Leonardo DiCaprio's evil Calvin Candie inDjango Unchainedwould be perfect in it. The long, lean tailoring, darted in the back with sculptured shoulders, had Civil War stylings all over it. But the antebellum age quickly reverted to something else—blue and black stripe suiting from a collaboration with artist Marcus James that suddenly announced ragtag Dickensian/Carnaby Street. "That's what it's all about," said Lynn backstage. "The Gopher Gang stole clothes, cut and mixed them up, restitched them back together in a sort of helter-skelter kind of way—it is meant to look ransacked because it was."Even ransacked looked good with Lynn's signature tailoring. More precise engineering followed, including some very good trouser suits with touches of goat fur and his trademark buttery leather (Lynn will never stray too far from his rock 'n' roll roots). A black jersey dress that doubled as a T-shirt was perhaps inspired by his old boss and front-row guest Roland Mouret, whose "TTD" (tunic top dress look) created a triple-duty garment. Then there were the cobweb lace pieces with a hidden horse motif that were imminently wearable, minus, of course, the "septum rings" that looked as painful as they sounded. The show ended with looks in box pleats with paper-bag waists—they were zany yet well constructed, and they may well turn into the Marmite of fashion: Customers will either love them or hate them. Let the buyers decide.
15 February 2013
Todd Lynn in Africa? This is a combination that might seem decidedly odd at first, but when you know the other inspirations—Heart of Darkness,Apocalypse Now, and the artist Peter Beard—it begins to make more sense. The beauty and horror in Beard's work is an attraction for Lynn. The color washes that permeated his collection—decorative printed silks done in collaboration with the artist Marcus James—seemed a nod to the brushstrokes that often accompany Beard's photographs. Here, they made perfect sense as a beautiful motif.In contrast, the sculpted silhouette of a Todd Lynn safari suit—the opening look of the show and the first few variations—felt a little more unsettling. The safari suit is always a little difficult to pull off, with the opposing images of Yves Saint Laurent andDaktarifighting for space in the collective consciousness. Add to that a particularly severe take on tailoring, and it can all get a little too much. Saying that, Lynn's trouser-cutting technique—here, long and lithe with a flare—is something the designer is known for, and was particularly good this season.Yet sometimes it seems that Lynn is too in love with technique. In some of the other clothing, the school of tailoring that came to the fore in the late nineties seemed too stridently apparent. While it's clear that Lynn is capable of doing whatever he wants to with cloth, he doesn't always have to show it; it can work to his detriment. With some of these pieces, less would have been more.
14 September 2012
Kitsch makes for an odd title for a Todd Lynn collection. Glancing at the show notes today, you had to wonder what Lynn—a disciplined craftsman who traffics in the emphatically clean—might have to do with, say, Hello Kitty key rings or "Hangin' in there!" cat posters. It was interesting to contemplate. Further study of the show notes revealed that this season the designer was taking inspiration from the wonderfully named Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum, and by extension his Renaissance-referencing paintings and influential kitsch manifesto. Nerdrum's philosophy on kitsch is too dense to unpack here—Wikipedia it if you like—but it involves an affirmation of the forcefully individual self. That's a take that sits easily with Lynn's look.The Hello Kitty collection will have to wait for another season, in other words. Today's show was another Lynn exercise—and a particularly strong one—in forceful simplicity. Per usual, the key elements of the collection were strict suiting, architectural draping, and absurdly well-cut leathers; the suiting looked especially good, boasting terrific wide-leg trousers and pencil skirts paired with jackets that were circle-seamed or made with origami folds. The angled leathers were also a clear winner. Lynn's draped pieces were nice, but the only real standout was one burnt orange dress with a dramatic cape effect. His big new idea this season was to make garments faced in different materials, front and back; he made a lot of use of a raffialike jacquard in ocher for these pieces, and the material gave the look punch. It was good to see Lynn working with so much color here, and he used it well. There was also a nice additional texture in the collection's decayed lace, a fabric that made too few appearances on the runway today. On the whole, though, this was a top-notch collection for Lynn. The clothes didn't expand his brand's vocabulary too much, but they reaffirmed his acknowledged strengths.
17 February 2012
There's rarely much news at a Todd Lynn show. Today's outing was no exception, but the collection he presented was well executed and concise. This season, he continued to soften the look of his urban warrior clothes for men and women, in particular by integrating yards of draped and trailing fabrics into his looks and by turning out his clothes in weather-beaten stretch linen and silk. Lynn has also squared off the daggered shapes of his tailoring, which has helped to freshen up his silhouettes.In addition to the flowing fabrics, Lynn's key ideas this time around were to slice open his jackets and trousers at the hip, revealing layered materials or skin, and to punctuate looks with punkish rows of pins. (The pin jewelry was made in collaboration with Shaun Leane.) A top made almost entirely of pins is going to get a lot of action in fashion editorials; a cropped jacket in black, with pins latticed along the collarbone, will be catnip for the woman who's looking for a tasteful, even grown-up way to let her inner rock star shine. Ditto the pinned blazer for men in Lynn's washed blue linen.Those rainy blue silks and linens were the only hit of color at this show, which makes Lynn's collection an outlier in a season where bold palette is the big story. That said, he did engage with one of the other emerging Spring '12 themes, which is shine: Some of his strongest looks were sharply cut cotton bouclé pieces in silver. The short, knife-pleated silver skirt and hip-sliced, high-collared vest looked particularly good.
18 September 2011
Futuristic fashion collections take a dim view of the world to come. Designers tend to eschew giddy techno-optimism in favor of either aBlade Runner-esque vision, urban and Orwellian, or a post-apocalypticMad Maxtake on things. Todd Lynn's new collection, shown today, wasn't overtly futuristic, but it had thatMad Maxvibe. Lots of black leather and earthy neutrals, shot through with blood red; fabrics caped, stretched, and draped across the body; fur collars that swam up over the face, as though protecting against some species of flesh-eating radioactive bug.The future according to Lynn isn't all bad, though. For one thing, it's emphatically well tailored. The designer is a whiz with leather, and if you're still in the market for a pair of rock star skinny leather leggings or a sinuous leather jacket with daggered edges, this collection is the place to find 'em. Lynn also showed some long matte silk skirts, draped Haider Ackermann-style—if these didn't look new, they still looked timely—and several cool knits, including a nice asymmetric wool hand-knit for the boys, and a wool rib for women that hugged the body like neoprene. Good, wearable pieces, these. There were also a fair amount of dystopic-looking men's suits, some with leather sleeves, others with a caped front that definitely fell on the less wearable end of the spectrum. Lynn's most interesting idea had to do with his shoulders: When he wasn't softening them with curved construction, he obscured them completely, creating habitlike collars that folded down over the shoulder, then flared out again. It made for an attractive silhouette. The show's standout piece, however, may have been the heavy-duty, long leather gloves the designer sent out with a good number of his looks: They'll be just the thing when the day arrives for fighting off the zombie hordes. Or, more mundanely, they'll really come in handy next winter.
20 February 2011
If you think about it, all designers have a touch of Dr. Frankenstein in them, each season conjuring up an army of new women. Perhaps it's not a stretch, then, that creating new life was the thing that captured Todd Lynn's imagination for Spring. The designer named his collection Genesis Redux, describing the clothes as beautiful new creatures.These Lynn-iads took form in a mix of fabrics and textures: expensive Italian cotton, powdery matte snakeskin, linen, and leather, occasionally traced by almost scarlike gold zippers. A jacket in moss green silk with a front torso and shoulder panel in sage-hued python gave you the impression of metamorphosis, of something shedding its skin. And those hooflike platform booties certainly hinted at another species. (Though that new species could be Gaga sapiens.) If the idea was at times too subtle, a spiraling silver carapace—Lynn's second collaboration with jewelry talent Shaun Leane—strapped onto the side of a simple jersey top and skinny pants pushed it to a welcome extent.Backstage, Lynn talked about evolving his vision—an idea apparent in the slightly softer and more casual feel of his clean and lean urban-warrioress signatures. He didn't say it, but it would appear to be a commercial maneuver. Though here, the C-word remained unsullied with Lynn's luxurious and still-interesting clothes. Ultimately, the designer offered options for those who want a little edge or a lot. Take those high python collars that reached up the side of a model's neck: Most were separate pieces buckled on—a way to leave your avant-garde at home when you need to meet the parents or the loan officer.
20 September 2010
The inversions that climate change is causing in nature are grabbing attention in every other arena, so why should fashion be an exception? Todd Lynn's inspiration was twofold. The hunter captures and wears his prey, then the tables are turned: The hunter is captured and caged by the game. In other words: Nature finds a way to deal with man. It was an admirable and—in its own dark way—reassuring message, but it was somewhat obscured by Lynn's sinfully sumptuous materials. The hunter's prey was symbolized by fox furs from Saga, which the designer draped, shruglike, over a taupe leather jacket or a felted wool coat. The cages were a little easier to cope with. They were woven leather, exaggeratedly straddling the torso.You'll notice that, in both instances, the emphasis was on the shoulder. Lynn went for a pagoda silhouette in his more "low-key" pieces, like the wool jacket with linebacker leather inserts, or the gray jersey jacket that also featured built-out leather shoulders. The combination of cloth and skin was a step forward in a softening of Lynn's usual hyper-tailored aesthetic. Another significant advance with this collection was the overall use of leather, braided into strikingly dramatic outerwear. Climate change or not, Lynn continues to cover a narrow waterfront, but he's mastered a balance between provocation and desirability. And, although they were separated in today's front row by his old boss Roland Mouret, we have him to thank for London fashion week's oddest (semi-)couple: Janet Jackson and Soft Cell's Marc Almond. Imagine the sweet but strange music they'd make together.
20 February 2010