Sep 29

Sep 29 Vautrait SS24

A collection can be many different things, often at the same time: a display of products, a marketing operation, a creative outlet, or an experiment within a by-now-long tradition of sending clothes down a runway. Or, as it happens with the best collections, a reflection on what a garment is and can be, an investigation of the relationship between the body and a reworked piece of fabric. Enter Vautrait SS24 Collection.

A thoughtful and deconstructive reflection on the archetypical nature of garments, Vautrait SS24 Collection treated every piece of clothing as the self-standing and autonomous being that it is: «As the self-standing of something independent, the garment is distinguished from an object.

Something independent can become an object when we represent it to ourselves, be it in immediate perception, be it in a thoughtful remembrance that makes it present. The essence of the garment, however, does not reside in the garment as a thing object of representation», recites the press release. As a thematic investigation of each garment’s essence, the primary concern was not the body of the wearer, thus all the deconstruction and “anatomical infidelity” showcased thanks to oversized and dramatically disassembled blazers, romantically subversive shirts and sensually loose trousers.

And yet, having agency, each garment was magically able to perfectly host every single model’s body. The garment is still a holding of the body and Vautrait reminded us that there are almost endless possibilities for this hold: it can be firm, it can be abstract, it can be welcoming or constraining. For Vautrait it’s always gentle. A tender way of shaping the body instead of just serving it, «thereby defining its existence and cultural meaning».

In a collection that can be read as an illustration of Plato’s theory of Forms with garments as absolute and timeless inhabitants of the hyperuranion and human bodies as representatives of the material world, an encounter takes place, separate entities can reconcile. Vautrait showed how clothing can still be a means of knowledge: to welcome someone is to not repair a spilling vessel.