Concurrent with the “Teenage Dirtbag” meme on social channels are high school reveries on the catwalk that go beyond candy-colored Mean Girls suits. There was a preppy/boyish thread that ran through the spring 2023 men’s shows that was enlivened by skateboards at JW Anderson and ERL. Meryll Rogge, from Belgium, leaned into the jock (as depicted by Hollywood); prom looks were played with at Thom Browne. Then there was All-In’s Debutante collection, presented at the Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour in Montmartre that was a reasonable stand-in for a smells-like-teen-spirit gym in Anytown, America.
Benjamin Barron and Bror August, from the U.S. and Norway, respectively, and based in Paris, are the designers behind this upcycling label that’s something of an insider’s secret. Maryam Nassir Zadeh was an early supporter; Lotta Volkova modeled in last season’s couture-inspired collection; and Inti Wang, Leon Dame, Issa Lish, and Ceval were some of the faces who joined the coming out party for spring today. (Among the “chaperones” at this event was the Swedish Fashion Council who have been helping the designers structure the brand as part of their talent incubator program.)
One of the reasons to celebrate was All-In’s long-awaited (at least by me) shoe debut. There were sandals with straps hung with silver hearts, and slip-ons with pointy toes and detachable gaiters. As All-In pieces, made using vintage garments, are one-offs, accessories allow fans a way into the brand.
Fandom, which was manifested in the teen idol dress made from a collage of T-shirts featuring Madonna, Janet Jackson and the like, was one of the themes of the collection, said Barron. “I was inspired by this idea of a teenager collaging their idols onto their bedroom wall; collecting the things or the people that have inspired them and trying to take on different parts of their identities which have already been watered down from other parts of culture. Like someone learning about punk through Pink or hyper-femininity through Britney Spears.” August added: “It’s this idea of someone trying on different types of identities and styles for the first time and the failures that happen from this experience, or at least how you don’t really know the meaning of what you’re wearing. You’re indulging in aesthetics that you don’t actually have any understanding of, and the teenager is an archetypal symbol of that idea.”
It will be many years before we understand the implications of the decontextualization of images enabled by social media, but like fashion, these new means of communication place an emphasis on surfaces. Earlier this week, Demna announced that as “fashion is a visual art” he felt no need to verbalize his work. Still, models slogging through the mud did more than paint a picture, they evoked an exodus and raised questions about consumerism and what we value.
For all of its sparkle and let-them-eat-cake deliciousness, All-In manages to get beyond surfaces. The idea of working with existing materials (mostly, since the shoes will go into production), is to acknowledge a responsibility to the environment and the future. And upcycling requires solution-based design. There was a lot of tactility and ingenuity in this collection: Look at how vintage denim was transformed by an overlay of black lace; how the sleeves of a dress turned upside-down created the effect of a handkerchief hem; how a towel assumed a Grecian drape. The way the clothes were assembled took the work beyond surfaces, putting the emphasis on transformation. “By decontextualizing clothing and removing some of the signifiers that we felt the garment already had, we allow new identities and new styles to enter it,” said Barron. If that’s an invitation, we’ll be RSVP’ing yes, thank you very much.
