Ann Demeulemeester Presents Its New Fall/Winter 2024 Collection

“This is my second show. The sophomore effort is always particularly arduous, in all creative fields. It is the moment when a vision truly becomes apparent. The roots of my idea of what Ann should be lie in the power of indefiniteness, in an ambiguity of dressing, being and behaving that allows the freedom to be as one wants, boundlessly. I see Ann as a mindscape more than a brand. As such, it demands to be built piece by piece, adding, taking away, morphing things as we go along. The elephant in the room, in such a plan, is the archive: the extraordinary corpus built by Ann in her viscerally personal career. I aim at being just as personal, which essentially means free. The archive to me is a forest, in which to enter and get lost, discovering myself as I discover things while continuing getting lost, maybe forgetting something familiar to find something new. There is no other way, I believe, to move forward. This collection is what came out of the first thoughtful and yet instinctive delving into that forest, following a raw, barbaric urge that allowed me to break out of certain codes and explore others, in shapes as well as in color. The enveloping volumes of the greatcoats and jackets, the flow of negligè-inspired long dresses, the way we worked with pleating and aprons, but also the wildly tactile touches and totemic elongation of the stricter silhouettes all riff on things I feel particularly close to. There is a rawness, but also a delicacy, to it all that is an unfiltered translation of my way of being. Sending all this out on the catwalk today, surrounded by sounds performed live by Neuf Voix that are integral to the mindscape, gives me a sense of nakedness. I feel exposed and fragile, but also protected by the awareness of being utterly authentic in my process.”

Stefano Gallici