Christian Wijnants offered up a collection that looked faded from the sun, with lightweight silhouettes and fabrics with a diffused, lived-in look and minimalistic lines.
The Belgian designer said he had been inspired by photographers Vivian Sassen and Jackie Nickerson, both of them known for their distorted imagery. He mentioned works that picture parts of Africa, which informed his fabric choices and prints. He was just back from Zanzibar, where he shot campaign imagery for the collection.
With blurred floral motifs — like ink that has diffused into silk or watercolor paper — and a largely pale color palette, he played with natural materials to give them texture, offering crinkled linen suiting or cross-body dresses and lightweight trench coats that used a quilting technique, minus the padding, to create depth.
Tailored linen with just a touch of synthetic was creased to look a little like rippling water on easy, fluid separates in white or powdery blue, particularly striking as a long, sleeveless jacket. More structured linen suiting combined red and white threads in its weave, resulting in something akin to a washed-out coral pink, but not quite. Denim was printed to look like tie-dye, in a stone-washed finish in workwear-inspired shapes, or with an outsized floral print in pastel hues, the latter also offered on matching accessories.
His looser silhouettes were complemented by knit pieces that highlighted the body, like sweaters inspired by fishing nets or pretty crocheted tops with 3D floral motifs.
