Twelve years in the past, when he was first beginning out, Mossi Traoré managed someway to stage a trend present in Père-Lachaise cemetery. Absent an encore of that feat—a extremely spectacular one, given the pink tape concerned—the designer as a substitute selected the clean canvas of an empty area on the Rue Commines. However he saved the inspiration, revisiting a dialog he as soon as had with a girl who claimed to reside within the cemetery among the many tombs and their numerous tales misplaced to time.
“I like discovering inspiration in demise, it’s a really peaceable oasis over there,” mentioned Traoré earlier than the present, including, “I discover that solitude, unhappiness, and anger assist me create extra simply than after I’m joyful.”
Constructed like per week in that girl’s life, “Mon Amie La Mort” (“My Pal, Dying”) unfolded because the designer imagined she may reside, as if the town’s largest cemetery have been a neighborhood in Paris with its personal galleries, fleas, weddings, and candlelit suppers among the many graves.
However fairly than wallow in melancholy, Traoré as a substitute turned to the hands-on enterprise of supplies and motion. Because it occurs, he’s engaged on an exhibition that may open on the MuCEM museum in Marseille subsequent Might. Throughout his many visits to France’s second-largest metropolis, he seized on the thought of parasols folded up on the seaside, which right here reappeared as pleated, draped and sculpted attire just like the one which opened at this time’s present and, additional on, a pair of black bloomers.
This assortment discovered Traoré again on dwelling turf, revisiting methods realized firsthand from his late mentor, Josette Thomas, a seamstress who had labored for the designer’s all-time idol, Madame Grès. The strongest appears right here reconnected with that lineage in white—a fairly bustier prime, a sleeveless summer season costume with a brief, asymmetrical draped skirt; a stunning goddess robe—or black, for instance in hand-pleated organza affixed to a T-shirt costume base or an architectural look Traoré described as “the bride wore black.” Transient fall colours appear to be sticking round for spring, and right here Traoré gamely supplied a tombstone-and-wilted-bouquet palette of grey, yellow, brown and dusty rose on a smattering of bustiers and attire.
Exploring the contradictions and potential affinities between couture and on a regular basis garments is one among Traoré’s signatures. Right here, the inspiration might need appeared darkish, however someway strolling amongst lives as soon as lived helped him deliver a sense of sunshine and playfulness again to his work.
