PARIS, JANUARY 24, 2016
by LUKE LEITCH
The Faith Connexion mother ship on Rue Tronchet is hot, loud, and busy. Entering it, this reviewer felt stupidly out of touch: What really was Faith Connexion, anyway? Hearsay said it was the follow-up project of Christophe Decarnin—the man who warmed the bed for Rousteing at Balmain then exited it—and his team. None of the charming hustlers in the humid showroom would answer an oblique question with a straight answer. But the clothes in this third menswear collection said enough. The Runner trouser, patented apparently, features an aesthetically applied panel not dissimilar to Decarnin’s Balmain-period wildly must-have moto pant: Here it came in denim and suede and sweat—“in everything.” There were leathers and denims hand-painted by two collaborators; one of whose style was soft watercolorist, the other Americana and silhouette heavy. Perforated sweats and destroyed denim had their destruction applied by Thomas, the in-house destroyer: He (or she) drills the fabric. There were duffles, including a massively oversize denim piece that took you back to Twisteds, and some pleasingly disemboweled jeans and jumbo cords conjured up by an in-house stylist named Anastasia.
A circus theme ran through the collection, expressed in the Barnum graphics on leathers and narrow fish-tail drill parkas by another in-house graffiti artist—Pyscologique, they called him—as well as a velvet reversible Bengal stripe and check ringmaster tailcoat. Bikers kept coming, for squeezing on above undershirt/skirts and looser “grandpa” oversize pants (this old-timer loved them), or jumpsuits in velveteen micro-cords. The squares at the party—discussing economics among themselves while all the cool kids necked—were the cashmere knits, round-necked or V, and plain. But hey, they always sell. Faith Connexion combines aesthetic direxion and ideological circumspexion to (rightfully) merit affexion.
