The Courrèges invitation was a metal mobius strip, and its infinite loop nature provided a clue about Nicolas Di Felice’s designs for spring. Where many of the skin-baring looks appeared to be two pieces—a tank dress worn with a bandeau bra, say—they were in fact one. He achieved this particular item by designing the halter-style dress with a neck hole topped by a horizontal strap: Slip your head in and stretch that strap around the chest—there are snaps at the side—et voila.
“In the period that we live in it’s always a comeback to something else—and I’m not talking only about fashion—so I decided we’re going to work on cycles and on repetition,” he said at a studio preview. “The mobius ribbon expresses it really well: A simple piece of paper becomes something where there’s no beginning or end—no inside, no outside.”
If that sounds complicated, there was nothing conceptual or contrived about the outcome. Di Felice pointed to an archival cape in duchess satin from André Courrèges’s winter 1962 show as the launch pad for this exercise, but the collection was sexy in a way that he’s made his own: young, confident, party-ready, both hot and cool.
Expanding on the mobius strip idea, Di Felice created trousers with an additional piece of fabric extending from the outer seam of one leg, then crossing between the legs, to connect behind the other one on the outer seam. I can’t remember ever seeing something like the half-pant/half-skirt hybrid results on the runway. Also on theme was a wisp of a dress that, when laid flat, was a circle with a smaller circle for an armhole. Twisted around the body with the help of some light boning—yes, like a mobius—and it’s precisely the kind of thing young women want to wear out to the club.
Di Felice’s “summer residency” at Jean Paul Gaultier, where he guest designed a couture collection, has raised his profile. There were screaming fans by the hundreds outside today waiting for Wooyoung from the South Korean boy brand Ateez. It also might’ve boosted his ambition. Originally, he wanted to do 40 of the same looks. “But,” he said, “I thought it might be a bit too cynical for me. It’s not really me to be cynical.” Instead, he worked in a cycle: evolving his modern version of that 1962 cape—his comes with an exaggerated hood into a coat with a martingale in back into that halter dress with a bandeau and so on. In a less skilled designer’s hands, the repetition built into the process could’ve proved boring. The opposite was true here: It was a CV for everything Di Felice can do—from sexy club wear all the way up to the hautest of couture shapes.