Marine Serre: Visions of a very foreign planet

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 25, 2020

Futurism in fashion generally looks old fashioned, with inevitable echoes of Pierre Cardin and Courrèges, though not at Marinne Serre, practically the only designer who manages to sculpt a vision of a foreign planet and style that seems plausible and cool.

 
Serre has a dark yet beautiful conception of people “tumbling down into the futurist wormhole,” as she wrote in her program, of multiple generations embarking on an intergalactic voyage.
 
A bizarre mix of the familiar and the fantastic – all conditioned by our contemporary concerns. So, many models wore face and surgical masks, albeit made to match the houndstooth sci-fi governess dresses that were the heart of this show.

Serre’s selection of fabrics was not all that revolutionary – fuchsia knit dresses; cotton djellabas; embroidered table cloth frocks; or faux fur bed-cover coats. But the results were often revolutionary.

 
Staged inside Le Centquatre, a huge art space in a former factory at the top of Paris' 19th arrondissement, with a forbidding industrial soundtrack and lots of large darkened mirrors, the show was dark, yet not dystopian. The audience perched on low carpet-covered benches like polite hippies.
 
Worn by a cast that varied from veteran models to tiny tots and some colorful characters such as Reverend Sister-hoodie; hunter gatherers; or awakened sleepers. Many clad in the designers signature mini ball print, the leitmotif of all Serre collections.
 
Entitled Mind Mélange Motor this was a somewhat weird, often wacky, but ultimately rather beautiful fashion moment, and a reminder why Paris will always be the true center of the fashion universe.