Because it’s meant that we’ve been able to go much deeper, across categories…and this is the big story of the collection for me,” he said. “Because, of course, we are not the type of brand that will ever sell that kind of ‘This season I flew to Hawaii and was inspired by’ narrative, anyway.”
Putting aside the thought that a Ha-Y/Project collection could be kind of great, you could see what Martens was getting at in a series of typically fiendishly ingenious innovations that ran across the collection.
These included the braided knits that rose from the waist to tangle at the neckline in order to allow the wearer to rearrange the garment in various permutations according to inclination.
As Martens said, “You have to choose where exactly to put your head within it: We always try to push people to experiment with the garments and really embrace them and have fun with them.”
Double minidresses could be worn with the organza top layer pulled down for a more classic look, or pulled up by drawstring for a broken effect.
Bucket bags came structured, as did many of the garments, with wire inserts that invited the carrier to reshape their architecture as they pleased. The Melissa shoes, in rubber, were the chicest vegan beach-ready footwear you will ever see.
A substantial collaboration with the 110-year-old Italian sportswear brand Fila started with Martens and his crew poring through the company’s archives to find the most characteristic looks from his past, which were then subject to Y/Project woo-woo redos.
So a red tracksuit cut in with white branding was rearrangeable via popper to allow you to dictate how many logos you were flashing.
Look 33’s skirt was in fact a pant, with a hole to the top left of the garment that the wearer had ejected her leg from.
There was also a fiercely edged remix of the brand’s emblematically oversized 1990s basketball sneaker, the Grant Hill.
The Fila interlude receded to be replaced by garments that were also workout ready. A men’s short-sleeve shirt came with a series of panels whose arrangement demanded that you decide whether you preferred pattern or plain, while some awesome gowns in jersey and velvet could be worn in multiple ways.
Y/Project clothes are the Swiss Army knives of fashion, multifunctional, versatile, and highly handsome to look at—democratically experimental garments that allow the consumer to be just as creative as the producer.
COLLECTION
