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Avoc to skip Paris Men’s Fashion Week to focus on ‘suburban’ project
After Berluti, Niuku, Haider Ackermann, Julien David, Christophe Lemaire and Icosae, Avoc too has announced it will not be showing at the next Paris Men’s Fashion Week. The French label, winner of the ANDAM’s Creative Label Prize three years after being launched by designers Laura Do and Bastien Laurent, has shown at the Paris Fashion Week every season since January 2016.
Avoc’s new strategy is the reason behind this latest withdrawal from the Paris calendar. Last season, the label presented a collection called ‘Périphéries’ (suburbia), and is keen to continue along this path, to give a new fashion focus to the ‘Grand Paris’ project, launched in 2008 by then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to transform the entire Paris metropolitan area into a leading world city.
For Laura Do and Bastien Laurent, giving the Paris catwalks a miss is a way of breathing fresh zest into their creativity. Their new approach involves several initiatives, among them the opening of a workshop/retail area in Aulnay-sous-Bois, in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris, in addition to their atelier in the city’s 20th arrondissement.
“It will be a venue for working, experimenting, designing and selling; we will equip it with sewing and printing machines. We want it with a shop window overlooking the street, so that it can be open to the people living in Aulnay-sous-Bois. It’s important for us to have a physical base in the capital and one in Aulnay-sous-Bois because, besides embodying the notion of a greater Paris, it's something that is consistent with our way of working and looking for ideas,” said young designer and local Bastien Laurent, talking to FashionNetwork.com.
As part of this new direction, Avoc intends to set up a cross-cultural project blending together “sport, fashion design, young people and the creativity of Paris at large.” Supported by the local authorities, Avoc is looking to select 20 youngsters from local secondary schools, who will work together for a year in the label’s creative workshop in Aulnay-sous-Bois, developing a parallel collection under the aegis of Laura Do and Bastien Laurent.
“To go the whole way with this approach, Avoc will prepare for its return on the official Paris menswear calendar in 2019 with a physical/digital show held simultaneously in Paris and in the suburbs,” said the label, adding that it wants to “share this radical, inclusive aesthetic with an international audience.”
And while Avoc is keen to rejoin the Paris Men’s Fashion Week calendar next year, this will not be the case for Spanish label Palomo Spain, which presented its menswear collection for the first time in Paris for the Autumn/Winter 2018 season, and has decided to stage its next show in Madrid.
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