The invite to Charlotte Knowles and Alexandre Arsenault’s show featured a grainy, vintage-toned photo of a model in a darkened room, silhouetted against a window and holding up a dramatic fan-like pleated skirt, the light catching the delicate, faded floral print from behind. It also looked a little like she was flashing the viewer—which, it turns out, she sort of was.
The duo will be celebrating their brand’s 10th anniversary next year, and found themselves returning to a central source of inspiration for their graduate show at Central Saint Martins: the French photographer Bettina Rheims’s landmark book Chambre Close, which featured images of women undressing across a series of cheap, anonymous hotel rooms. “We’ve been feeling nostalgic about where we started, and we thought it would be an interesting exercise to think about how we see things now, versus how we saw them back then,” Arsenault said at a preview. Added Knowles: “All the women in the book are in different stages of undress, so we translated that into the collection quite literally: a lot of deconstruction and layering. We also took inspiration from the colors and went a little more zingy with the palette. It’s really about our twist on femininity.”
You could see that in the first look: a deconstructed lingerie ensemble with a corseted camisole top and a sheer skirt falling from garter clips layered over cotton briefs. But it quickly unfolded as a showcase of everything that makes Knwls such experts in revealing and concealing the female form: a draped powder blue jersey number that twisted around the body with flashes of a lace-trimmed bra and briefs underneath, say, or a dusty rose liquid satin slip dress with crossover jersey banding wrapping the waist and exposing the stomach, suggesting the disheveled glamour of a woman stepping out of her boudoir half-dressed. One standout gown of blush pink and peach lace unfurled in concentric tiers, peeling away at the chest and trailing down the calf like the opening of Venus’s half shell. There were also plenty of thoughtful riffs on denim and leather—the former a fabric of particular interest after the year the pair spent working under Glenn Martens at Diesel—through jeans that had been slashed and rejoined mid-thigh, and a 1950s-inspired swing coat on acid, cut from distressed dark brown leather to include undulating sculptural lapels and puff shoulders.
While the show itself was plenty of fun—staged in the sleek, parquet-floored performance hall of a south London school, accompanied by a killer trip-hop soundtrack by their regular fit model, the musician October Logan—it was the impeccable craft and attention to detail that impressed most. Just take the skirts and bags featuring crushed leather roses made from super-thin skived leather, hand-embroidered and pressed flat, or the dresses made of multiple jersey and silk lingerie pieces sewn onto phantom tulle to create the illusion of them falling off the body. Now that their Diesel gig is up, the pair have had more time to focus on their label, and it shows: This was a confident, well-executed collection that nodded to the brand’s past while also breaking new ground. Ten years into their journey, Knowles and Arsenault’s ability to articulate a new “twist on femininity,” as they put it, feels as relevant as ever.
