SHORTLISTED DESIGNERS 2012

hyères 27

Maxime Rappaz Switzerland, Women collection horaires

Having graduated in 2011 from HEAD, in Geneva, Maxime Rappaz is currently working for a year at Roberto Cavalli, in Florence. His end of year collection offers a study upon purity. Of course, absolute purity is an ideal, an inaccessible concept. Instead of attempting to access it directly through garments, he has taken inspiration from his own photographic research which describes the straight lines and smooth, monochrome surfaces of our modern environment. He then proceeds as if creating a photo-montage, confronting the curves of the body with these geometric shapes. The collection is thus presented like a series of minimalist dresses, supplemented with rigid accessories which transform the feminine silhouette into a sculpture by Donald Judd. By adding leather panels, which seem suspended in space, to the initial organza architecture of the garments, Maxime Rappaz re-frames, de-limits, withdraws, masks, transfers back to the human figure a sort of maniacal control, at the limits of the absurd. A systematic repetition of colours, shapes, materials; the designer seems to exhibit all of the symptoms of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). “Yet at the same time I wanted it to be ironic, like something that was funny, but in the end isn’t” he says, as a form of (non) explanation… A provocation? A denunciation of a certain standardisation? Maxime Rappaz is not yet ready to stop squaring circles.

Collection produced with support from: Première Vision, Soieries Roger Cheval, Stib19 Spa, Cadica Group, Puntoseta.

www.maximerappaz.com