The reveries of Ann Demeulemeester at PFW

"I kept thinking about the last days of summer this season. Just as it ends. Every day was nice to wake up to and spent in the sun.

The sun, the sun-faded clothes, the hues that fade and blur like when you fall asleep in broad daylight, by the sea. When you wake up, they are all distorted. Bare-chested and jeans.

I’m listening to “Crystal Castle II” by Crystal Castles as I write these seemingly random notes, early in the morning, a few hours before the parade. “Rumors” by Fleetwood Mac was the record of those summers. One of my favorites. My mother played it every morning. What a fascinating combination of sounds, sounds lost and found. A sweet and tender feeling: love or friendship? I don’t know.

Lace is tender. Skin is soft. This collection was born from that bundle of thoughts and emotions. I let them flow as I went, one thing found, another lost. There is lace and denim, and knitwear that flies like feathers. There is elongation and sagging, and the suppleness of tailoring. There are the infinite ways of a scarf. The long flow of a bathrobe, the desire for self-decoration, the poignant thoughtlessness: every day, it is a pleasure to wake up, to dress or undress. I never wore a bandana on my head back then, but I still love the look of a young Mike Muir. My jeans , on the other hand, were constantly torn and my grandmother was always mending them. What I seek is the indefinite. An ambiguity of dress, of being and behaving that gives the freedom to be as one wants, without limits, like those summer days and the infinite possibilities they offered. Crudeness and delicacy: an unfiltered translation of this feeling. Words have difficulty capturing it, but they transform it into a promise.

Ann Demeulemeester , for me, is a mental landscape that demands to be built piece by piece: adding, removing, weaving personal feelings and autobiography into the process, finding and losing, losing and finding.

Let me dream a little more."

— Stefano Gallici