Marine Serre: Subsistence chic in the city of Paris' wine cellar

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 26, 2019

Post-apocalyptic party gear and remarkably optimistic fashion seeing as the premise for the latest Marine Serre collection was that “Apocalypse has struck.”

 
“Ecological crises and climate wars are destroying the last remains of civilization as we know it,” insisted the pocket dynamo designer in her program notes. However, Serre’s tribe of fashionistas have survived.
 
She staged her show inside a truly enormous wine cellar for the city of Paris, in a quarter that still has historic wine merchants. To enter, the audience marched in through a chilly, 100-meter-long tunnel, illuminated by a giant green laser. Talk about a dystopian morning in the suburbs, more precisely the Seine bank industrial port of Issy-les-Moulineaux.

However, there was little historic about the collection, which collapsed into various looks – spacemen gear made into natty puffers, funky fluorescent uniforms recomposed as billowing frocks; bed cover plaid ponchos and wacky psychedelic skirts.

 
One could just about see them appearing amidst all the dry ice, lasers and lighting gels.  When one did get a good look, it turned out Serre was riffing on lots of her signifiers – circular logo tights; spherical bags; and tartan all-encompassing masks. In the end, a memorable show, even if one didn’t really get to see the collection properly.
 
“Shamanic animalism from forgotten tribes,” wrote the former LVMH Prize winner Serre in her description. Which was infinitely better written than her show and clothes were lit.