A.P.C. has launched its 22nd Interaction (the brand’s term for its collaborative projects) in partnership with designer Natacha Ramsay-Levi.
Nicolas Ghesquière’s right-hand woman at Balenciaga and then Louis Vuitton, and artistic director of Chloé until 2020, Natacha Ramsay-Levi is known for imagining clothes that reveal the personality of their wearers. She also likes to push the boundaries of masculine/feminine binarity.
It is with this state of mind that Natacha Ramsay-Levi has taken on the materials and emblematic pieces of the A.P.C. wardrobe: denim, poplin, cotton gabardine, which she twists in her own way, rethinking proportions, like the gabardine trench coat, which she reinvents in a cropped version as well as a longer, zipped version. She reworks another A.P.C. wardrobe staple, the jean, with two models: Clinteau, with its high, fitted waist, long, flared leg and quilted pleat detail on the front, or Madame Santeuil, mid-rise waist, wide leg, with a white tie at the waist, evocative of the 1970s. She also proposes a new women’s shirtdress in plain poplin in white and blue, and in viscose with a striped ecru background, with quite spectacular volume, a large, angled sleeve and a well-marked cuff.
Let’s be a good sport and use the word ‘conceptual’ as it is utilized by fashion to mean ‘beautiful but not wearable’. As far as Natacha is concerned, we can say she’s conceptual and wearable. And that her vision of femininity, strong and assertive, is aimed at a woman who could be said to be unchosified.
– Jean Touitou, A.P.C. Creative Director
Some pieces are also available for men, like the western shirt in lightweight organic denim.
The campaign was photographed by Nigel Shafran, a British artist known for his fashion stories in The Face and i-D magazines in the late 1980s and 1990s, at a time when a new wave of photographers was turning to reality as a source of inspiration. In the 2000s, his work took a more contemplative turn, seeking beauty in simpler, more familiar places. He conceived this photo shoot as a few stolen moments in the daily life of personalities who are right at home in their time.
