With his Our Legacy Spring/Summer 2024 collection, called “Snow in April,” designer Christopher Nying set out to challenge our understanding of fashion, climate, and reality itself.
The authenticity of touch and the intimate relationship between clothes and wearer underscore the philosophy of this novel collection. Nying’s work pushes us to reevaluate our relationship with reality, our wardrobe, and how we perceive seasonal changes, asking the ever-pertinent question: what does it truly mean to dress for the season?
The Our Legacy Spring/Summer 2024 Collection is a tribute to Nying’s native Sweden’s capricious and enchanting seasons, where spring is often a dance between awakening and dormancy. Light and temperature are no longer just natural phenomena but become intriguing themes that shape Nying’s creative journey.
Nying contemplates the unpredictable Swedish spring, where warmth can swiftly be replaced by a snow-blanketed landscape, as the heart of his collection. The confusion brought by these unexpected temperature drops, he says, injects a degree of indecision into our dressing: “You don’t really know what to wear.” His ingenious solution? Creating clothing that is prepared for all possibilities, which he achieves through an intriguing play of light layers.
The collection borrows from its predecessors, a continuity in fashion language that Nying desired to maintain, while also venturing into novel territories. A distinct feature of this series is the reinterpretation of fall silhouettes using thin, breezy materials, an interesting blur between the seasonal lines. The inter-seasonality reflects not only in the garments but also transcends gender, with pieces that cater to both men and women.
The earthly tones of the collection, combined with the artful layering, bring forth an element of “skogsmulle” (forest troll), a Swedish cultural icon that signifies a harmonious relationship with nature. The collection, however, doesn’t shy away from more sophisticated options suitable for a city setting. A striking example is the plaid-zip up look that harks back to early Oasis fashion, while other pieces treated with a unique pigment dye designed to fade over time infuse a vintage aura.
Adding a hint of fantasy to the mix, Nying, inspired by his childhood experience of watching daytime horror movies, incorporates elements reminiscent of the VHS era. The contrasting binaries of spring and winter, day and night horror, reality and perception are all seamlessly fused in his tactile collection, bringing us closer to life as it truly is. As Nying reminds us through his collection, life is often more strange, whimsical, and delightful than any fiction.
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