It so happens that a word exists for finding peace amid chaos: reaching back to Ancient Greece, Egonlab’s founders titled its spring outing Ataraxia. “As a brand rooted in society, we are constantly facing the problem of uncertainty—worrying signals and alarms happen every day,” Kevin Nompeix said during a preview. “What we wanted to do is create a place of possibility, not paralysis.”
The starting point for this collection, however, was very much of the present, a disarmingly poignant anecdote about a nephew who didn’t see the point in studying because, he told his uncle Kevin, war was coming anyway. Nompeix and Florentin Glémarec determined that, rather than give in to despair dressed up as irony, Egonlab’s response would be a message of unity and hope.
To find that, the designers said they set out to explore the in-betweenness of liminal spaces. “We wanted to create something between the real and the imaginary, the present and the future, a bubble where people can project with more optimism,” they explained.
Since its founding in 2019, Egonlab has had to recalibrate constantly to connect with consumers even as old wholesale models collapsed. This season’s runway brought a new mix they see as a solution to uncertainty. On one hand came instantly accessible pieces (shirts, shorts), and on the other more elaborate handcraft. Take, for example, the embellished shirt dresses intended for VIC and special orders. Those pieces, in white cotton-silk gauze overlaid with fine guipure lace—both vintage and recent—are made using laces and embroideries produced and sold by nuns in monasteries all around France. “There’s not a machine in the world that can replicate that kind of work,” they noted.
It was those pieces, plus the occasional silk shirt trimmed with Swarovski crystals, that inspired the designers to add “coquette core” to the fashion lexicon. “It’s about being desirable without really asking permission,” explained Glémarec.
Elsewhere, the message came through pastel accents and the brand’s signature tailoring, often with surrealist flourishes. Pant hems on a chocolate linen suit had boot-lace-up details, for example, and the famous colimaçon corkscrew staircase from the Musée Gustave Moreau made its way onto collars. The hybrid shirt/t-shirt, a denim jacket with a poplin shirt collar, and button-down shirts with trompe l’oeil neckties looked clever. The tartan Eastpak bags looked practical. The jury is out, however, on whether the Egonlab base will go for jackets tucked into shorts.
“Trompe l’oeil is a stylistic manner of dress,” Glémarec offered. “You conserve the structure but you’re lightening things up.” Speaking of keeping things light, that linen is finer than it renders in these images, and it will work nicely if next year is even remotely as hellishly hot as this week has been. For sweater weather, some knits gave the sailor stripe a handsome wavy turn. Waves returned on a leather-collared field jacket with bias pleating created through a complex embossing technique, a reference to Magritte’s The Lovers. That and several other pieces here showed a new maturity. Which may be one reason why Egonlab was shortlisted for this year’s ANDAM Grand Prize.
