JORDANLUCA FW24 Balloons With Hopeful Silhouettes
The British-Italian label commissioned 1,500 printed balloons from artist Dominic Myatt to decorate its Milan Fashion Week runway.
For Fall/Winter 2024, JORDANLUCA began with one buoyant item: a balloon. Designers Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto viewed the delicate, blown-up object as a sign of hope. “There is a bittersweet, nostalgic charm to brightly-coloured party balloons – they evoke gatherings, childhood, youthful optimism, play, unguarded happines,” they mused in their show notes. “There is a hopefulness in the way we give them life with our mouths.” This theme permeated the brand’s Milan Fashion Week runway, where 1,500 balloons designed by artist Dominic Myatt congregated amongst guests.
The collection’s subversive manifesto was, in part, galvanized by a quote from JORDANLUCA-favorite author Chuck Palahniuk, in his novel, Not Forever, But For Now: “Once the breakable things are broken, then everyone can relax.” Much like the concept of a balloon’s impermanence, the notion of time — and its ubiquitous nature — became particularly noteworthy for Bowen and Marchetto, who crafted a dress made of 37 continuous meters of one fabric, wrapping it around the model countless times over. It was aptly called the “Carousel of Chaos Dress.”
“Our own personal tussles with grief have helped us to strip back our understanding of spirituality so that, freed from its more complicated accoutrements, it becomes about nothing more than finding joy in the now,” the designers wrote.
In mode, the Bulldog Bomber boasted a determined demeanor, offering a “statement of purposeful haste” directed at the modern-day world. The double-collared Clover Shirt, which was first introduced for Fall 2023, returned with a fusion of British Savile Row and Italian tailoring, nodding to the founders’ respective backgrounds — and the result was a perversive take on formalwear. Kilt Trousers, meanwhile, paid homage to tradition, renewing the brand staple in the form of a cheerful suit pant. The Monolith Coat was a confidence booster, with big shoulders and a business-savvy attitude, while the Parka Jacket adopted Brutalist pattern cutting and pockets as lapels.
Here, JORDANLUCA envisioned hope through a careful subversion of the classics. Like a balloon, the brand blew up, shrunk and popped the standardized codes for everyday fashion essentials, noting their steadfast popularity and rebuilding them to catch the zeitgeist of today.
See JORDANLUCA’s Fall/Winter 2024 collection in the gallery above, and stay tuned to Hypebeast for more Milan Fashion Week Men’s coverage.
