_Ponystep.com II

On the theme, just another great article from my current website of choice, this time, reviewing Romain Kremer's increbible new menswear collections.

Romain Kremer - Fashion Forward.
by Dean Mayo Davies


"Romain Kremer is a menswear designer with bottle. His breathtaking spring 2009 show ranks as not only a high of the season, but of his career so far, though there’s plenty more to come from the man pushing both the industry and his talent to the edge. Here, he chats about techno, neon and ‘Love and Violence’.

Dean Mayo Davies: Your spring/summer 2009 collection felt like the collection you were put on this earth to make. Do you feel at the height of your talent at the moment?

Romain Kremer: Well... I hope it will feel like that even more next time! Yes, I do feel something like what you’ve described, but it also feels like it’s just the beginning and next season is gonna be even better...

DMD: For me, it’s crucial that menswear does push forward and this collection committed entirely to that...

RK: I’m happy, but I think I’ve always pushed in the same direction. Maybe this time there’s more of a singular focus so people could understand what I was talking about. There’s definitely a really strong message.

DMD: I was talking to Nicola [Formichetti, who styles Kremer’s shows] through e-mail about the catwalk. What I loved, apart from the fact the collection is like nothing we’ve ever seen in menswear before is how you could see a mental journey and exploration in the show, a rarified experience these days. You started with these amazing dresses - which were entirely masculine - and it evolved into looks with draped elements and then sort of hyperfuturistic soccer uniforms...

RK: Oh that’s cool, that’s nice of you to say. Thank you.

DMD: It was almost like you’d created an army...

RK: Yeah! You know that was kind of the idea, but above all what excites me so much was that people really got what I wanted to say this time. Speaking with you, I realise that what you’re saying is really what I wanted. It’s the first time I can see a good relationship between me and the journalist! But not only the journalist, I mean the people involved too, the people from the industry. This time, people really took it seriously - before it was fun or kind of a joke.

DMD: You’ve really embraced colour over the past few seasons and it’s reached a crescendo in this collection. What drew you to such vibrancy? You’re earlier collections were more muted...

RK: I’ve always been into neon colours, but when I started I really didn’t want to push it too much because I thought it would be a bit too Cyberdog! After a few seasons I did them but spring 2009 isn’t really about neon as such, it’s about energy through colour. It’s kind of like the pictures that show the colour of your aura: something subliminal and vibrations of colour. I’m really into the subliminal, in the way I was trying to show a dress without it being seen as just a dress on a boy. I was trying to take people were they didn’t expect to go, but without frightening them...

DMD: Is it true you started as a dancer?

RK: I started dancing when I was nine-years-old, really young. I also did a bit of gymnastics - I was really into things that involved the body. I danced for like, ten years, and wanted to go to school but my father wasn’t really having it: it was a like Billy Elliot but without the ending! So I visited London a lot as I had friends here, and that started me drawing which got me into art which got me into fashion. I’m still into performance now.

DMD: I think you can see that in your approach, not only through your spatial awareness but the body, which seems a central theme...

RK: Yes, I’m talking about fashion being a theatre of life. A piece of clothing doesn’t have any meaning until it has a body inside - to me there’s not one good piece of clothing or one good boy or whatever, it’s everything together that interests me. That’s my definition of fashion, or what it should be. And I don’t like my clothes to be easy, I want people to accept that wearing a piece is not only what a designer can give you but what you bring to it too.

DMD: There’s a certain type of Romain Kremer model, that has defined your collections from the start. What does he represent?

RK: A young generation that wants to have fun and not understanding why older people are so bored and pissed off. They models have open minds and are perhaps still a bit confused, like my clothes.

DMD: Is music important?

RK: More than anything else even, because it’s the only real reference I allow myself. I like music because it’s not about image, it’s about brainstorming. For me, it’s even more exciting than a movie or an exhibition.

DMD: It’s completely visceral...

RK: Yeah, exactly. And I’m very open-minded with it, I really can go from one type to another easily - I like to put myself in the condition of what I’m gonna show. When the collection is a bit hardcore I listen to industrial music from the Netherlands, but then sometimes I listen to something more conceptual like Philip Glass or Aphex Twin. I’m very much into electronic music - I love opera, I love jazz, I love classical but electronica is the art, the brief to me: repetition, no beginning, no end, it’s kind of out of space almost.

DMD: It’s close to us as it’s something that’s still being explored too. I mean jazz has had it’s heyday...

RK: I remember a couple of years ago in Berlin I was at a dance performance choreographed by a young American. I really loved it and everyone else there HATED it. I met him afterwards and he said I liked it because we were the same, we were both from the techno generation!

DMD: With s/s 09, you opened with "L'Amour et la Violence" by Sébastian Tellier. Was that a metaphor for the collection?

RK: It was really connected, not only because it was the only music I’d listened to for three months previously! The lyrics when translated are: “Tell me what you think about my life/ About my adolescence/ I also like/ Love and violence.” It’s really talking about me at sixteen-years-old aswell as the collection and the construction: pushing together sport and sexuality.

DMD.

www.romainkremer.com"