London-based menswear designer Martine Rose is on her own trip. That’s what makes her work such a pleasure—the sense that she’s telling a story no one else knows. This season, she delved into her own teenage memories of raving, with a lot of help from the Wild Life Archive, a collection of youth culture errata compiled by Rose’s friend Steve Terry. Using Terry’s old rave fliers as a jumping-off point, Rose conjured the “low” glamour of the original scene—the shiny shirts, the crusty furs, the baggy pants and anoraks—and exaggerated the look as a means of elevating it. The big faux fur—shaved with a beard trimmer, with embedded fliers—has been a surprise hit, according to Rose. But that makes sense, actually. Even Rose’s most fanciful pieces are grounded in a masculine reality that makes them relatable. The same is true of her more challenging silhouettes, like the extra-voluminous denim: They’ll look great in editorial, but the look wouldn’t strike you as absurd if you encountered it in the street. That’s an impressive trick. Martine Rose has been flying under the radar for a while now; here’s hoping this is the collection that gets her the buzz she deserves.
—Maya Singer
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