Y/Project Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear ...Fashionweekly...On Fow24news.com

You know what’s really interesting/great/all-round-happy-making when you’ve followed an up-and-coming designer for a while?.....

Seeing how they’ve pushed themselves into new territory, challenging themselves to grow. A double check of those boxes for Y/Project’s Glenn Martens, an affable, smart Belgian guy who is as well versed in history as he is in the many expressions of ’90s European rave culture. A little like the clothes he designs, then. For while they very often draw on the street—for Spring, he explored the myriad ways you can deconstruct and reconstruct next season’s ubiquitous track jacket and shell suit—he then collides it with literate and sometimes witty, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny allusions to period references, cutting techniques, scale, and sense of volume. Nobody does a dramatically proportioned sleeve that’s part Henry VIII, part Hamlet, like Martens. It’s an act of audacious silhouette-building on a par with his always standout thigh-high boots, now very effectively rendered in softly crumpling beige linen.

If the tracksuit has been played relatively straight elsewhere this season, here Martens worked his magic, fantastically contorting one in red, replete with piped edging, into falling off the shoulder, exposing a lingerie underlayer, while a navy shell jacket was buried deep into layers of tulle and worn with wide, floor-trailing pants.

If the tracksuit has been played relatively straight elsewhere this season, here Martens worked his magic, fantastically contorting one in red, replete with piped edging, wrapping and folding it around the waist, exposing an embroidered tee, while a navy shell jacket was buried deep into layers of fabrics and worn with wide, floor-trailing pants. I won’t even bother to make the plea that someone should work up the nerve to wear either of these on the red carpet, but, you know, a guy can dream. Not, I’m sure, that that’s Martens’s dream, except in some kitschy, that-would-be-funny-if-it-happened way. Instead, his Spring collection underscored that he’s more interested—as he should be—in making fashion that connects with him personally and generationally; fashion which makes sense in, and of, today’s world. Showing to a room full of young, hip editors, you could sense the rush of longing for clothes which veered from pan-gender (the oversize linen blazer which opened the show, taken from his men’s collection) to clever (the subverted striped rugby shirt that’s now a dress) to, and I dread to use this word here, cool—yes, so kill me—like the almost armorial deconstructed blue shirt and dusky pink trousers.

But let’s return to ticking those boxes. Martens also took himself into a look that was a little more generally accessible for a wider audience. Backstage, he said he’d never want to be considered someone whose clothes could be described as “pretty.” Fair enough, it’s a word that can carry the dread whiff of the banal. So, let’s use another—elegant. It’s really the only way to describe a couple of terrific long shirtdresses, one in softly draped pale muslin-y linen, the other gold and cream striped silk, deftly worked with placket detailing snaking across the shoulders. With a bit of luck, they’ll bring Martens and Y/Project to a whole lot more people’s attention.