It wasn’t a bird, and it wasn’t a plane – this was KidSuper. It wasn’t a bad theater production, a good comedy show, or a great piece of live art disguised as an auction. “This is a fashion show,” said Colm Dillane: “So you better look at it that way!” Well okay.
KidSuper rolled back to Paris and indeed delivered a fashion show. The opening segment was fashion show 101: it featured a contemporary dancer dropping her layers and twirling around a mysterious Miss Havisham character, clad in black tulle petticoats. Two columns of white yarn hung along the runway to signify Dillane’s riffs on Einstein’s String Theory (shorthand: Everything Is Connected In Mysterious Ways). The final look was a model in a white KidSuper suit and a black wool skirt: the latter falling apart as he walked towards the photographers. We were in the room where Dries Van Noten and Junya Watanabe had just shown. This was definitely a fashion show (is that enough?)
The thing is, Dillane isn’t just a fashion designer. He is a very ambitious character – an artist-entrepreneur – who has seen fashion as the main (but not only) medium through which he can satisfy his hunger. And he has some great ideas. Here we saw more variants of his cushion jacket, this time produced in collaboration with Canada Goose (the fleeces were also excellent). His love of violet was satiated with graphic adaptations featuring his illustrations or Einstein’s hypotheses in a gangly vagabond silhouette.
There were references to his memorable Louis Vuitton menswear cameo in the pile of paper bags carried by one model, and a long red cloth coat was in disarray. Ronaldinho delivered a cameo in left field in a huge faux fur and a T-shirt printed with his own image: there was royalty in the room. There were a lot of accessories included, including small handles in very recognizable (cough) shapes and a super cute sewing machine bag. A new monogram on denim with a pattern around the silhouettes of two dancers looked promising. The confetti didn’t fall exactly when it should, but that doesn’t matter: KidSuper can’t be boring.
