Review of Ludovic de Saint Sernin Spring 2022 Fashion Show
The Body and Soul of Desire Through an Eyelet
By Long Nguyen
A bulk of the work of the Belgian-born and Paris-based designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin (henceforth LdSS for the designer and LDSS for the brand) for his LDSS brand work is beyond the actual clothes of which the eyelet lacing bikinis and jeans are current best sellers.
It is foremost the building of a community, sharing ideas, ideology, and personal ethos so that the LDSS clothes just belong naturally and organically.
The brand and the designer have garnered and harnessed a robust community of fans, audience, and consumers behind the social media initiatives, including the fast-growing sex and body-positive Instagram site launched in August 2018 @ludovicdesaintserninx. The designer constantly seeks contributions of images from the global public for sharing online and perhaps more an eventual art coffee table tome. The Instagram site is a well-curated platform about sex and the discovery of the body. The images celebrate sex, not about any fashion at all.
The collection is called Désire because fashion always starts with the body. It’s from a character in the fifteen-century chivalric love story from René d’Anjou Livre du Coeur d’Amour épris, ” LdSS said backstage after the show standing in front of a white line up board with pictures of all the looks in the show’s order. “Of course, with a bit of a mix of California mermaids.”
In essence, the body serves a peripatetic function of connecting a commonality of thoughts and sentiments of audiences willingly to participate in this space. Personal and self-expression, the quest for identity, and the rights of sexual independence are primary perennial sources of thinking and departure points for any LDSS collection.
The kaleidoscope of this show lineup imageboard offered a brief overall look at the LDSS clothes in question, garments that looked so fragile against the crisp skin of either the guy or the girl who wore them live moments earlier. All the looks are classic LDSS from the white belted coat and pants, the sheer black shirt and pajama pants, the white one shoulder strap silk slip-tank with matching pants, or the black or khaki short sleeve midriff cropped tee-shirt top with either shorts or relaxed pants. Of course, there is that fancy black strappy swim bikini with a white crochet skirt overlay.
The clothes on the girls display the same level of body-conscious garments, but in the show, these women’s clothes don’t look or have that feeling of overt sexuality. The softness in this collection is unlike any other so far seen in Paris or Milano, or New York. It’s like a light summer breeze on these beach-ready bodies.
We worked with the French painter Jean Claracq for the image of a young boxer, and the silk taffeta boxing short made of gradated embroideries of flames,” LdSS said.
CLaracq is a young 30 years old French artist known for his figurative paintings with that vagueness and ambiguous introspection whose work shift between painting and digital art and treated subjects often on the borderline of queer identities.
Despite the minimalist and streamlined feel, the actual garments are pretty complicated. A brown leather bra tank top worn with light yellow cotton linen pants and a loose jacket is made from braiding of the leather strands and knitted together like an embroidery process to form the actual pattern.
These jeans aren’t old destroyed jeans,” LdSS said of the denim pant that is shredded in the front legs revealing the pockets and skins underneath. “We painstakingly take out the warp yarn slowly and then reinforce the horizontal weft yarn to make it more stable.” The male model wore these jeans with a silver strappy bra-tank top made from silver metallic yarns.
Several iconic LDSS eyelet treatments on the white trench or flare pants and black swimwear will be available immediately for purchase via the brand website. In addition, one of the black thongs in the show is the collaboration with the giant Pornhub platform.
“He is the exact type of artist that Pornhub support – a progressive innovator that jettisons the traditional tropes of fashion and brings an inclusive take to the industry that changes it for the better,” Pornhub said in its support in sponsoring this Spring 2022 show.
One of the male models took his round turn in the finale of this Spring 2022 show, in the Institut du Monde Arabe basement, wearing a tiny black bikini thong. A show outfit that was no longer causing any stir. Since he started back in 2017, LdSS has firmly decided what he wanted of his fashion and has applied himself relentlessly without compromising to accomplish that goal.
LdSS has at least achieved part of his fashion mission. The body is a location of proud identity and the place for a fierce act of imagination and fashion.