Marithé + François Girbaud: ‘Pre-Male Couture’
By Michelle Taylor
Photos by Giovanni Pucci

MILAN, Jan 24, 2005/ FW/ – Marithe’ & Francois Girbaud prepare ‘Pre-Male Couture’, synergizing the primitive with the future in a tribute to the male body, giving an autumn winter menswear 2005/06 collection full of fashion metamorphosis.

Holed and worn trousers seem hacked and tabby, but are instead worked by remarkable laser techniques and hide Saville Row fabric linings while traditional tailoring undergoes deconstruction to give new definition to the male silhouette.

Neat knitwear meets slim legged pants as the French duo continue to redefine shape. Jackets are purposely longer and jeans and pants lowered almost to what a prudent would consider embarrassing levels, in an almost-see pubic zone. Hence torsos are elongated to exciting new levels and aided even further by belts tied around inexistent waistlines that have shifted notably south.

Models meander around the maze catwalk, up and down rises, in and around corners, to the sounds of a tic-toc clock in what was a decisively avant guarde show and like always a welcomed breath of fresh air fans of these innovative designers have grown to expect and love, compared to the usually strict adherence of traditional catwalks found in the Milanese fashion metropolis.

Wrinkled street appealing leather and deconstructed-reconstructed jackets are striking as visible stitching becomes part of the integral design just as much as patterning and decoration.

Tattoos divulge warrior tales for urban soldiers enhancing the every important need for rigor and structure in ones wardrobe.

Functional in an organized apparent chaos, the collection based on ‘scarification and desecration’ of clothing for devoted tailors and technical pioneers, Marithè & Francois Girbaud is not only naturally harmonious but aesthetically dazzling, the two fundamental keys that fashion has always been based on.

Marithé + François Girbaud

Marithé + François Girbaud

Marithé + François Girbaud

Marithé + François Girbaud