This Is How the Infinitely Cool New Courrèges Collection Was Made
It’s one week before the Courrèges show, and Creative Director Nicolas Di Felice is trying to explain to me, a person with a brain that repels mathematics, what a Möbius strip is.
He Whatsapps me a photo of the twisted loop. “You put your finger on one side of the ring and you start to turn,” Di Felice says excitedly. “And there’s no inside and no outside.” His spring 2025 collection was conceived around this unending movement, the idea of “an infinity circle around your body.”
“I was inspired by this in the way that I cut the clothes this season," he says. "There are dresses that begin as bras, then they go up around your neck and go down the waist; there are skirts that start with a panel on your right, and it goes under your legs.” It’s about evolution and repetition too: “I love to make clothes that evolve so look one becomes look two, look two becomes look three–there’s not really two times exactly the same garment.”
Waves were another big touchpoint, as was a recent sound bath experience he had, even if he was a little embarrassed to admit it to me at first. “We can laugh about this,” he says jokingly, “but it was so powerful.”
For the show this morning, a large disc filled with sand-like pebbles sat at the center of the space and undulated with a soothing, ocean sound. It was a brilliant backdrop for the collection, which included sensual draped dresses with cut-outs, tailored column-shaped coats, a body-cocooning hooded cape, and beaded and pleated skirts.
“There’s much more fluidity in this collection,” Di Felice says when talking about how he’s been building his vernacular for Courrèges since joining the house in 2021. “Waves always come back to your feet when you walk around the beach but then they leave and when they come back, it’s not the same wave.”
Philosophically speaking, this says loads about how Di Felice approaches the Courrèges legacy. He’s treated the brand's distinctive space-agey 1960's DNA with great reverence, understanding the importance of not reinventing the wheel but not regurgitating archival designs either. Instead, he nods to the Courrèges codes through shapes and silhouettes, updated and evolved to look utterly of the moment. “Intentional is a really nice word,” Di Felice says. “I have both the storytelling part and the practical part, making a nice long coat or suit you can sell. But I always need to find a reason to make clothes.”
Below, Di Felice takes us inside his process for Spring 2024.
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