That Chloë Sevigny has signed Giovanna Flores’ work is a big deal. It matters not only because the actor’s style is admirable, but because as the face of Kim Gordon’s X-Girl and sometimes impersonating Christ’s creative director, Sevigny can say, as LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy does in “Losing My Age,” “I was there.” There in New York City’s late ’90s, early Otis indie fashion scene, that is.
Flores is perhaps the most independent of the new generation of designers, following in the footsteps of Susan Cianciolo, Elsa Jimenez, and the Asfor Quartet. “I reference vintage clothes a lot and also sentimental clothing, but I think the clothes don’t really read that way. It’s almost like they have a car or a kid with a new toy. I like that there’s freshness in my work where I don’t understand it at first,” said the designer.
Most of the deadstock material Flores collects directly from his collections. The designer does not use patterns and makes everything himself, resulting in Ah! Regular moments when sitting at your sewing machine. “The process is flawed and I learn a lot when I’m doing it,” she said. A sense of joy and play comes into play in discovery, often with a kind of awkwardness. The designs here were also quite interactive, coming to life by stretching and morphing the body.
After working with prints for a few seasons, Flores turned her attention to vibrant color for fall, buying plenty of vibrant stretch velvets. When he opened the boxes, he found that the material had been cut into long vertical panels to minimize stretching. And so innovation was born out of necessity. Flores said she welcomed the interruptions and her solution was to color the pieces and finish the edges with overlock stitching. Sleeve innovations were another fix. There was a yellow top with a triangle of cloth attached to the shoulder that fell over the arm like a handkerchief. Then there were the sleeve seams that started at the breast and extended up the arm, causing the fabric to stretch and gather. Its influence was almost medieval. “I like things when they’re not just decorative and they have — I guess I wouldn’t really call it function — but it transforms the body,” Flores said.
Also in the mix was a comfortable striped seat with the jacket’s padded edges tied in leopard. Full waistlines were also used on trousers. A classic pop-over torque around the body is created by the fabric residue entering the pole. Instead of bracelets and shoes, the designer wrapped and knotted strips of material around the models’ wrists and feet. (The style was in the spirit of the apparently no-sew Vogue shoot in the desert in 1968, where Giorgio de Sant’Angelo wrapped Varshka in yards of material.) “I see the work as sketches, and I let them rush, so that the bulk of the work is free,” Flores said. Its motto could be Make Do and Make Magic.
