If fashion is a circus, then who are those who inhabit it? In Colm Dillane’s hands the answer tonight was mostly puppet, with a hint of clown. You can’t argue with that.
Under his moniker KidSuper, Dillane’s greatest works of design so far arguably haven’t been his clothes, but his shows. Since wangling his way onto the Paris schedule and then winning his Louis Vuitton cameo, he has realized that these shows can act as what he calls “a Trojan Horse of ideas.” In other words a proof of concept platform for a further entertainment project, with a collection on the side.
Tonight’s KidSuper episode saw him collaborate with Cirque du Soleil. As Melanie Summers, CdS head of licensing said pre-show: “We really like Colm’s way of stretching his creativity and pushing the bounds of interpreting fashion… This is the first time we are doing both a [collaboration] capsule collection with a performance integrated.” There is, you suspect, more to come.
The show began with Cirque acrobat Mai Yamashi establishing a point of connection between the two collaborating parties. Spotlit, she sat under an enormous prop hand from which strings fell to her limbs. Using cuts of light to create a stop motion effect between her movements, she became a puppet apparently activated. Then came the runway.
Alton Mason was first out, in a suit overprinted with an image of a battered wooden puppet. The strings tied to his thumbs led to another prop megahand that ran around the stage with Mason following beneath, as if under its control. It was a great piece of staging. Male and female models followed in tailoring printed with mannequins (fashion puppets), and then with pencil sketches of acrobats in contorsive extension. There was a section of KidSuper streetwear—patched jean-shorts, crystal spotted jeans, face-collage varsity jackets and shirting with Puma collab caps. Later a model wore a suit embroidered with a juggler’s hands in action under a knitted circus tent hat.
We swung on Wisdom Kaye-styled trapeze back and forth between an appealingly wearable contemporary aesthetic and a freakier Edgar Allan Poe x P.T. Barnum vibe. A green velvet pannier dress came with an oversized key apparently inserted into the spine of its wind-up wearer. A stilt walker in hand-painted pants displayed the brand’s commitment to diverse sizing. There was a fun dress made entirely of clownish ruffs. Every model was led around the stage by a looming hand above. The closing look saw a headless man in a confetti spot coat. For the finale, eight acrobats did mind-blowing things—the German wheel section especially—before the evening’s ringmaster came out in a piano key necktie and was hoisted to the rafters in triumph.
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