Bernhard Willhelm’s newest assortment was completely bananas. Actually: Bananas had been Willhelm’s inspiration this season, and his clothes’s key motif. There have been embroidered banana designs elaborated with loops of fringe, a print of a person consuming a banana, three-dimensional banana appliqués, and extra. The bananas had been ludicrous—to not point out suggestive—which was exactly Willhelm’s level. The designer was “celebrating randomness” on this ostentatiously cheerful outing, which featured numerous sliced and distressed square-cut garments, and nil situations of the colour black.

Willhelm was being playful, however his is critical play. To interact together with his garments means participating with the concept individuals may gown in a means far faraway from what we see on the road at the moment. The naiveté of his strategies—the knotting and slashing and seemingly improvisational draping—in addition to his touches of utilized injury, like dip-dye or shredded hems, all collectively prompt a uniform labored out spontaneously by a misplaced tribe of membership children who had determined to make a society of their very own, from scratch. In mentioned society, gender is a nonissue—you put on what you want—and it simply so occurs that one of many members of this new utopia is a grasp maker of intarsia knits, with entry to hand-embroiderers in India and placement printers in Japan. Which is a roundabout means of noting that Willhelm’s garments might look bananas, however the designer himself shouldn’t be. There’s each technique and class to his insanity.