The show opened with stark white crisp looks, in Mens and Women’s coupled outfits. A large oversized coat with gather double sleeve details, and contrast blue and white stripe garment interior, worn over voluminous wide leg pant, sets the tone of the show with the opening look. The fabric is coated sports-tech coated linen, giving a fresh sports-edge to the tailored silhouettes.
The closing looks focus on the graphic Merino wool knitwear, in contrast shapes. Models wear contrast exaggerated oversize knits as dresses, and super slim sleeveless tanks featuring a pixilated graphic of an eye and the words ‘free’ and ‘doom’, reflecting on the collections theme.
“The collection today displayed a more youthful energy, combining our tailoring elements mixed back with our sportswear influences. Inspired by the theme which delves into censorship and control, the collection focuses on controlled and released garments which is achieved through our extreme silhouettes, exaggerated and oversized vs slim and cropped. Some garments control the wearer by being engineered in a way, which is gathered, scrunched or forced to be worn in a certain way. “
Exploring the concept of censorship in an ever-growing society that lives virtually in public. The collection investigates the concepts of control and power, and the relationship with technology and real life. Intrigued by the notion of living a double life, one via an online avatar, which can at times be a distortion of real-life, vs the actual tangible real-life itself, STRATEAS CARLUCCI devise garments that can alter and adjust, control and be controlled, balancing this fine line.
Inspired by the Ondi Timoner documentary ‘We live in Public’, which delves into the world and genius mind of Josh Harris, whom early predicts the relationship between the virtual world and the physical world and visualizes these predictions through a number of wild social experiments. In contrast, STRATEAS CARLUCCI also investigates control in it’s most extreme, upon discovery of visual product censorship in Iran. In a stark comparison, the most mundane everyday products, such as hair-dye, have been altered where everything excluding the product, is viciously blacked-out on the packaging via hand-scribbled markings. As a result, leaving a ghostly fragmented silhouette of what was once a face and or body.
By exploring two extreme interpretations and colliding these views, creates a unique collection where the garments inhabit the roles of the controlled and the controller. The collection investigates these complexities through playful fabric innovations, restrained tailored forms vs. exaggerated silhouettes, whilst maintaining the brands masculine / feminine aesthetic and combination of streetwear influences vs luxury fabrications and tailoring techniques. Drawcords and casings adorn the garments, enabling altered forms, whereas other garments direct the wearer via manipulated silhouettes. Clashing colour and pattern, display clashing cultures and ideals, and intimate private details are left exposed and made public for all to see.
SURVEIL is both classic and subversive, man and machine, and a reflection on the virtual world which has proved how willingly we trade our privacy and freedom for the connection and recognition we crave for as human beings.
“Lions and tigers used to be kings of the jungle and then one day they wound up in zoos - I suspect we're on the same track.” Josh Harris – We Live in Public.
