Marine Serre’s fall 2021 collection, dubbed “Core,” wasn’t heralded by a short movie or a runway show, not even a virtual one, but by a website, www.marineserrecore.com, which went live at her regular spot on the Paris schedule: 10:30 a.m. CET, on the first Tuesday of the city’s show calendar. Somehow, in the turmoil of our topsy-turvy world, there’s something reassuring about that; not that reassurance has ever really been part of the Serre narrative. She’s a fearless questioner—of herself as much as of anyone else—and a pragmatic doer. It’s easy to imagine Serre being energized by having to find her place, and that of her label, in the maelstrom in which we currently find ourselves. The website, then, is a chronicle of all that goes into her designs, and ergo her view of the world, as much as it is a reveal of her new collection. And because this is Serre, someone who always prefers to use a “we” over a “me,” Core is also a rather joyful and life-affirming celebration of family, friends, and community.
“Core means the core of the brand, in much the same way as the idea of the core of a computer,” Serre said during a preview a few days ago. “It’s all of the memory; how everything connects. Pragmatically,” she went on to say, “it’s been three years since we began. We’ve been doing a lot, being an extremely creative brand; we felt the urge to talk, ring the bell, raise the alarm, and reflect that in what we’ve created. This is maybe another moment. An opportunity to look at the interesting processes we’ve put in place; to really think about the garments and the materials we make them from—the transformation of those is really part of our creativity.”
The collection is essentially a blueprint of all that Serre has accomplished since she launched the label; the latest reimaginings of her archetypes. It’s also a pretty breathtaking and brilliant statement of what can be achieved in the space of three short years; what can emerge when you harness talent with a clear sense of purpose and convictions about what constitutes your values. “What I’ve always disliked about fashion is trends,” she said. “When you know who you are, you don’t need to change faces every morning.”
There are plenty of Serre’s repurposed silk scarves, draped around sinuous black dresses, which have been accessorized with talismanic metal belts and petite chain-strap bags, while other scarves have been worked into tunics and tees. Deadstock leather in shades of black, tan, and brown is graphically patched, with an anthropomorphic feel—the dynamic of how clothes move with the body was a big obsession here—into blazers with squared-off shoulders, biker pants, and jeans-style jackets, sometimes layered up with short dresses created out of antique tablecloths.
Meanwhile, moire silk, one of Serre’s signatures, makes an appearance cut onto jackets that are either sculpted close to the body or cut MA1 style, with a cool, easy sense of volume and the requisite zippered sleeves. It’s also been used for everything from short multi-pocketed skirts to baseball caps to small bags designed to be worn strapped onto the upper arms. And the now iconic crescent-moon-motif-embellished bodysuits and regenerated denim or else was mixed with more hybridity in the form of sweaters and dresses collaged out of upcycled knits. Also, can we also just talk for a moment about this collection’s omnipresent earthy brown palette? Perhaps it’s an aesthetic channeling of our collective desire to be outdoors, to be in nature, to be in the world, again.
All of this was shot on a terrific cross-generational cast of characters, kids included; a neat and effective assertion of the need for fashion to exist in reality, and to make sense of our lives. Now more than ever, we’re caught at the crossroads of function and fantasy, looking for pieces that can offer a way to somehow simultaneously head off in both directions without feeling tugged one way or the other. “It was interesting to revise what we’d already done,” said Serre. “Basically the goal was to bring more real life to our design process, to bring garments into daily life.” Her solution was to ask the team to try things on, give their feedback, then modify to make everything more relatable. The world around the label features in other ways too on the new website. You can click on different aspects of the collection—“regenerated denim” or “regenerated silk scarves”—and be taken to mini documentaries outlining how the company uses those fabrications; a clever and thoughtful way to demystify the design process.
The website also houses a charming series of fly-on-the-wall photographic depictions of those within the extended Serre label family, wearing a few of the pieces, and engaged with the humdrum realities recognizable to every single one of us. “Cooking, spending time with your mother, in the garden, playing with your dog...pleasures which are simple,” said Serre, describing the scenes. “Fashion has always been about a dream, and I don’t like that. Here, fashion is the last thing you see. What you see first are the people.” Serre’s thinking about the site is akin to the way she thinks about her designs. Visit, spend time, come back, visit again, get to know what something means and what it stands for. Nothing should ever be fleeting, or disposable, gone in the blink of an eye.
By Mark Holgate