First published by T Magazine on 20 February 2016
Faustine Steinmetz, a French designer who presented at London Fashion Week today, has never been interested in runway shows. “Fashion became a little bit too much about the front row, and who’s sitting there, and who’s modeling, and that kind of crap,” she told T earlier this week. “And I think a presentation really brings it back to ‘objets d’art.’”
Steinmetz, who grew up in Paris before training at Central Saint Martins, is one of the much-discussed young designers being incubated by the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN scheme. She has been running her own label since 2013, and is always looking for the perfect, contemplative way of showing it. Her show today was held at the Tate Britain gallery, which she described in her accented English as “majestious.” Her set designer built a series of cubes, inside each of which was a group of models, visible only through peepholes in the walls; guests were given headphones on which they could listen to Steinmetz explaining the collection. “Because my inspiration was quite artistic, I really wanted it to feel like you’re going to an exhibition,” she said.
That inspiration is the work of the German artist Franz Erhard Walther, who caught her imagination with his use of fabric forms and bright colors. Steinmetz is best known for hand-weaving her own denims using recycled yarns; for fall/winter 2016, she created what she described as “sculpted embroidery,” by weaving large loops of yarn densely together and then trimming them with scissors to create a thick, ruglike fabric. The effect runs throughout her collection, alongside fluffy, mohair jeans and fine, transparent knits. “It’s all really in the textiles,” she said of her latest work. “Because I feel like this is where I can be the most expressive.”
The drawback of focusing the brand around homemade fabrics is that it is impractical to produce them in large quantities at Steinmetz’s studio and home — a shedlike structure that she built with her partner, Michael Hawkins. (“We’re a bit too DIY,” she said of the ramshackle, drafty building in Seven Sisters, London, where, until fairly recently, they slept on a mattress on the floor. “We always want to start everything from scratch, but I feel like I got so many wrinkles out of this place.”)
To expand her business, Steinmetz plans to move some production abroad. “I actually designed a few weaves that I really love, and we’re going to not do it in England anymore — but weave it fair trade, in countries where it will actually help people to get jobs.” Senegal, where her parents grew up, is her first choice. “We still want to show who made it, and have them write their name on the labels,” she added. “We want the customers to know exactly where the jeans come from.”
Steinmetz now has 30 stockists, including Opening Ceremony and 10 Corso Como, and was nominated as Emerging Womenswear Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in December. But she is her own harshest critic: In the days before each presentation, she gets so worried about her designs that “nothing can reassure me.”
Her ideas, which feel so unlike others at fashion week, seem to grow from a potent mix of artistic ambition and self-doubt. As a graduate, for example, she was offered an interview at Maison Martin Margiela — her dream job — but didn’t attend. “I started having dreams that Margiela was still there, and that I was trying to design in the studio, but there were all these professional designers who already had experience and were looking at me and laughing,” she confessed, laughing at herself. Instead, she set up her own label, drawing strength from her own singlemindedness. “I felt like my creativity’s a little bit particular,” she said. “And that unless I do it my own way, I wasn’t sure I could get as far.”