Designer update

Lab Beakers Not Included

March 2, 2010  3:34 pm

Look hard enough at a fashion season and you can extract practically anything you like. I like forensics, so the appearance in Dsquared²’s mad scientist show of a sheer stretch top with arteries carefully outlined on it reminded me that I’ve been catching vague intimations of a CSI subtext over the past few weeks. We have Douglas Gordon’s special-edition sweater for Pringle to look forward to, with his tattoos duplicated in cashmere, but what was really on my mind was Marlon Gobel’s hand-knit sweater intarsia-ed with a human heart and its supportive web of veins. Though Gobel is one of New York’s newest menswear names, he’s actually been a backstage Johnny for years, working with Thom Browne and then Michael Bastian, which gave him a mountain of valuable experience to compress into his own collection. Mad science is a pretty accurate description of the 12-look collection he showed in the geodesic dome he installed in an old bathhouse in the (very) East Village during New York fashion week. It occurred to Gobel that cable knit looked like the DNA double helix, which gave him one of his key motifs for sweaters and the quilting on a nylon blouson. A tuxedo jumpsuit had carbon fiber lining. Other tailored pieces were lined with Kevlar. The designer wanted his models, with their slicked-back hair and ID tags, to look like NASA Employees of the Year. To say he succeeded isn’t necessarily a compliment. Still, Gobel was insistent that “You can’t get into the future without the right ID.” The same goes for Bergdorf Goodman, where the collection has been picked up for fall.

tags: Douglas Gordon, Dsquared2, Marlon Gobel, Pringle of Scotland

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1. Loved-loved… Unique and glam. The collection, DOME, and energy was awesome. Looking forward to Spring 2011.

   By ch3600 on 03/2/10 at 4:29 pm

2. creativity, class, and cutting edge…. can’t wait to see more of what Marlon has in store.

   By jupiter123 on 03/2/10 at 7:40 pm

3. You have to see the collection to believe it. This young designer has such an energetic original “style voice” it’s impossible not to take notice. It’s the most exciting menswear collections I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t wait to see more!!

   By pinkpoet on 03/2/10 at 8:23 pm

4. Excuse my grammatical error, I said *collections instead of *collection, but I’m sure the word *collections will apply very soon….hopefully additional lines are on their way.

   By pinkpoet on 03/2/10 at 8:29 pm

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