The Museum of Decorative Arts to present Dunhill Menswear Spring/Summer 2020 Paris
Mark Weston used patterns from digital artist Kenta Cobayashi, who applied smudging technique to images from the advertising archives.
Mark Weston has been building the Dunhill silhouette for several seasons now — pure, luxurious and slightly irreverent, British flavored. For spring, this was channeled with sleek leather trenches, slightly oversize suits with barely a button and collarless T-shirts — in ivory leather. Bare skin under leather jackets — some wrapped around the body, kimono-style — added a further layer of sensuality to the collection. New to the accessories thrust was a slender, rigid briefcase from the house’s London workshops, worn vertically.
Weston is charged with updating the label — where is the future for a brand known for fancy cigarette lighters? Here, he got a jump start, teaming with Tokyo-based digital artist Kenta Cobayashi.
“I love the fact that he’s a digital artist,” said Weston, backstage before the show.
He recalled the label had in the past used patterns from hand-painting and traditional craftwork while here, working with digital methods, things felt a bit subversive.
“I love this idea of kind of turning it a little on its head and having this world of distortion,” he added.
More important, it worked. Cobayashi applied his smudging technique to treasures from the advertising archives, in this case, a Sixties store front — the Jermyn Street boutique, to be precise — streaks of vintage browns, beige and yellows on the rigid show invitation. Blown up on a nylon fabric for a chic poncho, where the long letters of the logo were stretched into stripes, it was a fantastic mashup of the label’s vintage luxury car interiors vibe and a techno style. Set alongside the rich, leather silhouettes — the poncho also came in a pale blue leather — and mixed in with lighter fabrics, Weston made a convincing case for bringing the Dunhill man to the future.