“People are there for the drama so let’s go for it,” said Kevin Germanier before a fall collection in which he recaptured the energy of his early days.
He went at it hard in the 19th-century performing arts theater where he staged the show, opened and closed by his muse, top French drag performer La Grande Dame, who is currently competing in the second season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race: U.K. vs. the World.”
A 55-strong brass orchestra on the stage performed live while his lineup was a riot of colors, sequins, shivering trims and found beads — how many more of those does he have in store?
Germanier said this was his introduction to couture, a space he now feels ready to step into.
Not only does the Swiss designer feel that working in Paris mandates bringing “the most creative, the most crazy” version of his aesthetic to the table, he also believes it would be “a very good business strategy” for his six-year-old brand. This is particularly the case after the proof-of-concept collection he made for the LVMH Circularity initiative, using 100 percent upcycled materials from the luxury group’s houses.
So even his knits were given a craft-intensive update, courtesy of his 84-year-old grandmother and 87-year-old great-aunt, who tag teamed to create the beaded iterations of the season.
Plus there’s always something new-to-him to turn into fantastical creatures. This time, it was spikes habitually used in floral arrangements. “Not only am I the bin of fashion but now I’m the bin of any material,” he joked.
He made them protrude from seams like spiny outlines or attached them as trailing feather-analogues onto corseted dresses made of rhodoid plates assembled with metal rings.
“No concession,” he said. “This is a fantasy. There’s a reason it’s a show: it’s not only the girls, it’s not only the garments, it’s the whole story.”
