A glance at the current news cycle would have almost anyone convinced we’re living in an upside-down world and it’s not London-based designer Torishéju Dumi who would say otherwise.
“It’s quite uncanny right now, things happen and you have to tilt your head a bit and think, ‘oh, OK,’ and that’s what I wanted these clothes to represent,” she said.
Silhouettes had a passing resemblance to staples from school uniforms, officewear and workwear, epitomizing what Dumi said was the “tension between structure and disorder, memory and distortion.”
There was the blazer-and-jeans look zhuzhed up by whorls of fabric at the shoulders and seams down the legs, worn by Naomi Campbell, who opened Dumi’s show once more; short pleated skirts that slipped to the knee to reveal a contrasting waistband that could be from a pair of slacks; gowns and tops that looked like they were made of repurposed jackets, and skirts perforated by large structured openings — armholes or collars, you pick.
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Elsewhere, edges were left raw to allude to reality glitching and wooden beads came as a symbol of creeping thoughts and a sense that things that were once “so natural [were] becoming so hollow.”
How precisely it all came together — and how attractive the result — was a reminder of how Dumi netted the Savoir-Faire prize at this year’s LVMH Prize.
Discombobulating as the times may be, she still “wanted to have these pieces that fit effortlessly in your wardrobe,” despite their strangeness. That grasp on reality should serve her business well, particularly now that Dumi has joined Dover Street Market’s Paris-based brand development program.