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One thing is making a puffa look sexy – another thing is doing it to a parka. So when the two are morphed into one and it’s opening your show, it would seem like a pretty impossible undertaking. Yet that’s what Julien David somehow managed to do – hood up and all – in his autumn/winter 13 collection, which kicked off the Paris shows on Tuesday evening. “The collection started with the fabrics. Very precious fabrics that are very dense and very textured,” Julien told i-D backstage. Playing with the concept of the skirt suit, the French designer applied a wealth of textures to his shape, from super hairy wool and dense velvet to plumetis and translucent nylon. There was nothing easy about it, and yet had a certain ease to it, not least in the tailoring of jackets and coats. “When I did the first jacket, I thought it looked a little bit like a French couture jacket. So I thought, ‘How can I tweak that and make it cool?’” Julien said. It was a perfectly considered collection, which more than anything showed the ability of the Tokyo-based designer – who received the ANDAM award last year and had his menswear show debut in Paris this January – to balance wearability with an all-important sense of something a little bit out there.
Text: Anders Christian Madsen
Images: Mitchell Sams
