Any puffer brand has a baked-in conundrum: Few people, and women least of all, want to look like the Michelin man. Judging by the front-row getups this PFW, ultimately they’d rather freeze.
That’s where a brand like Rains has to get creative, which they did this season by staging a presentation in the frigid, hulled-out space once occupied by C&A, just opposite the Printemps flagship. The concept involved 3D printing, a new spin on an ongoing collaboration with Zellerfeld, with biomaterials unspooling into figurines, line after line, as models slicked with shine and piled high in puffers filed in four by four. The meta punchline of it all was that the figurine factory wasn’t pre-programmed: It was churning out live-captured images of the models in the show.
Beyond the techy futurism, the event was also a debut for new lead designer Johanne Dindler—an alum of Moncler Genius and Adidas statement collaborations—who produced this collection alongside Rains’s head of design, Tanne Vinter.
“The whole challenge is: How does one become an individual in a uniform aesthetic?” Dindler mused following the presentation. “We have to be able to shape things in a beautiful way, by being a puffer but still giving it form,” she added. “The material has a certain weight, so you have to consider drapiness, and it’s also not forgiving so you have to be very precise about the seams.” That last bit is key, because Rains stakes its reputation on waterproofness.
Minus the odd showpiece, like an hourglass white number and those skirts, the dozen or so pieces shown here were IRL products presented with a real styling proposition. In this space-agey season, a silver coat struck the right tone and was presented here with an extra hood. Elsewhere, a nebula camo treatment or café crème coats, with a shearling-like finish or layered over a shiny black top, dovetailed with the season’s mood. A couple of sophisticated, big-collared black numbers looked like workhorses for any gender. Now that Rains has staked out its space, it will be interesting to see where it travels next.