Marine Serre: From Radical to Pragmatist

PARIS — As we speak’s announcement that Marine Serre will probably be Pitti Uomo’s subsequent visitor designer, is a few form of particular manner for the French designer to inform the world about her new males’s assortment. Males have at all times performed an element in her exhibits — she’d even taken to displaying her collections on the boys’s calendar — but it surely was solely two months in the past that she launched a wholly separate menswear vary. And now this, already.

“Pitti is without doubt one of the magical locations to make a primary menswear present,” Serre marvels. “They contacted me, easy as that.” But it surely might be that she is in her personal magical place, the place good issues simply preserve occurring. Gross sales have been up 20 p.c in 2023. She launched her first “retail expertise” at Galeries Lafayettes in December. And on prime of her blooming enterprise, vogue’s erstwhile Crown Princess of Dystopia has additionally switched conceptual gears.

As soon as upon a time, Serre sounded the alarm in regards to the future in provocative exhibits like Autumn/Winter 2009′s beautiful “Radiation,” which conjured post-apocalyptic worlds from the detritus of this one. (I feel she’d favor to name it “upcycling.”) This part crescendo-ed with “Amor Fati,” the movie she launched through the pandemic. However she adopted that with “CORE,” a group, movie and e book which celebrated the group, the humanity on the coronary heart (the core) of her model. And at her girls’s present a month in the past, she talked in regards to the course of by which her dystopic outlook was changed with an on a regular basis form of utopianism.

Earlier this month, Serre confirmed in a group area transformed from an previous railway warehouse in Paris. The viewers was ringed by a café, a bar, a florist, a pizzeria, the type of concessions that serve locals. She wished a communal expertise, and there was an enthralling sense of road life to the proceedings. 3000 folks answered her Instagram name for fashions. “My responsibility now’s to convey 10 minutes of pleasure,” she stated earlier than the present.

In hindsight, she acknowledges that it could not have been her greatest assortment, but it surely made folks glad, and she or he’d like to maintain that temper at Pitti. She visited Florence for the primary time to scout areas and located someplace with an unimaginable view and an all-important reference to nature. Past that, she’s not about to spoil the shock.

The Paris present marked Serre’s return to the ladies’s calendar. She felt the transfer was important. “It’s super-important for me as a lady to design for ladies.” Girls dominate her model, each by way of the crew (six of her eight board members and 65 p.c of her staff are feminine) and the course of the corporate.

So menswear is a departure. The clear separation of the 2 collections displays Serre’s personal conviction that they gown very in a different way. “I like girls who assume their femininity and I like males who assume the actual fact they’re males. As a designer, I do know you possibly can’t actually design the identical manner… a lot is dependent upon the form of your physique. Because of this, I have to separate each the collections as a result of it doesn’t at all times work aesthetically.”

“I don’t assume I perceive males greater than girls for positive,” Serre continues, “however I’m somebody who is admittedly glad to get suggestions. Once I designed with A$AP Rocky, I by no means had issues designing for males with one other man telling me what they like or don’t like.” She’s an excellent listener. “They inform me they want one thing easier, or they need a wider leg, or broad shoulders to really feel stronger. It’s the identical factor I’m doing with girls. I like issues which are fairly elegant and flowy, with grace, even when it’s a tracksuit. You get the vibe within the quantity.”

There’s at all times one man she has in thoughts. He was in her head when she selected the venue for her girls’s present, as a result of the reclaimed area was referred to as “Floor Management.” She pictured Him strolling by Berlin within the assortment’s trenchcoat, tied on the waist. “It’s a easy jacquard trench in cotton, however, relying on the color of your hair or the best way you stroll, that trench goes to speak about one thing else,” she explains. “It’s the thought of the day by day utopia. All the things may be magical.”

“He” is, in fact, David Bowie, the human embodiment of Serre’s personal model of alchemy: “Making the garment a pretext to inform a narrative, to make the creativeness work. David was actually that. You by no means knew what was subsequent with him. Once I take into consideration his movies, his movies, his final album, it was all so related. He thought of every part. After all, I’ve different males who encourage me, however I like to depart it at him.”

It’s been eight years since Serre launched her model as an idealistic various to the style trade’s harmful influence on the planet. She’s solely 32, however a mature pragmatism has taken over. “The problem isn’t better, it’s simply completely different,” she says. “I feel I’m a bit in my very own bubble anyway. Producing in a different way, being totally unbiased, I don’t have to make all my selections primarily based on cash. I’ve a freedom that’s actually highly effective to me.”

On the similar time, Serre accepts she’s now a part of the trade she initially positioned herself towards, and her position is not to sound the alarm, “as a result of everybody is aware of, and so they don’t wish to know.” Lately, she says she thinks extra about what to do along with her group, the individuals who share her values.

A phrase Serre comes again to usually is “connection.” She as soon as instructed me that what scares her most is the thought of a human being remoted, alone. Earlier than her final present, she imagined the entire thing hinging on a single query: Should you needed to name somebody to inform them one thing you’ve by no means dared to say, what wouldn’t it be?

“I like to attach folks with one another, and to attach with somebody you must inform the reality about your self.” I couldn’t let her go with out asking her what her reply could be. “I like you,” she stated. Now why wasn’t I remotely stunned by her reply?