Fashion brand AREA presented its Spring Summer 2023 Collection, that explores the beauty and symbolism of fruits, on February 11th, during the ongoing New York Fashion Week. The collection examines the different stages of fruits, as well as its meaning in pop culture. Fresh and vibrant fruit represents abundance, fertility, vitality, and youth, while in state of decay it stands for mortality and the cycle of life. The brand reinterprets these concepts with various embroideries, embellishment techniques, metalworks, and construction. The collection main motifs are grapes, bananas, and watermelon.
SPRING SUMMER 2023 COLLECTIONS
“The grape has historically symbolized abundance, fertility, and indulgence, though, this season we translated the motif into something more sensual and darker like lace hosiery. We developed the vine construction of a grape into hand-made jet-black metal stalks that are set in with thousands of black Swarovski cabochon crystals. This concept is explored as dramatic collars, earrings, and full body grape vine harness.
Bananas – This fruit symbolizes sex, death, and freedom. Suggestive and controversial, we explored this theme through embroidery, drape, and construction. Our research started with iconic banana pop culture references and artworks. Most notably, Andy Warhol’s sexually charged album cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), showcases a ripe peel-away banana that reveals pink flesh underneath. This specific artwork was reworked by The Guerrilla Girls who took Warhol’s banana and duplicated it into a big ‘zero’ highlighting the lack of female representation in art. This art poster became a call-to-action demanding female artists to be recognized in a male-dominated industry. We took these iconic bananas and created an artwork of rich yellow crystal and beading with decaying brown spots in paillette sequins. The bananas in the collection are positioned into a plunging halter top and cut-out miniskirt in our signature embroidery.
Watermelon – This fruit symbolizes life and love, abundance, and fertility. Fruit changes in appearance by the way it’s cut and so we applied this concept to couture dressmaking. We started thinking of a melon sliced in quarters, and how we could blow those proportions up into sculptural couture pieces like a black double-duchesse and rose paillette flesh embroidery or a dramatic black constructed hood tuxedo, both finished with golden metal seeds.” – from Area
Creative Director: Piotrek Panszczyk
Styling: Katie Burnett
Casting: Dan von der Graf / Andrea Prato
Hair: Benjamin Muller using Mr. Smith
Makeup: Sam Visser
Nails: Yukie Miyakawa
Music: Senjan Jansen
Production: REPLICA
PR: Lucien Pages Communication
Thank you to Mr. Smith
