The gay French author, poet, filmmaker, and playwright Jean Genet (1910 - 1986) wrote a book called QUERELLE DE BREST that was adapted in 1982 by German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder into a feature called "Querelle," starring Brad Davis and Jeanne Moreau. The highly homoerotic story involves the ship Le Vengeur coming into the port town of Brest, France where sailor Georges Querelle comes ashore to visit the bar La Feria. There he meets a man who is supposedly his brother. He also gets involved in nefarious dealings and has sexual encounters with men and women. And in order to understand these two clothing collections we are about to see, let's look at some film stills from Fassbinder's adaptation. I saw this film the year after it came out and it is stunning. The highly stylized, artificial sets and abstract, symbolist lighting plan are immediately striking, and is one of the reasons why this film is a legend.
Dries Van Noten and Ann Demeulemeester both took this unlikely book and film as inspiration for collections that, while flowing from a common spring, diverged in course and presentation. And even though it might be odd for two different high profile houses to choose the same inspiration material, it is worth noting that Van Noten and Demeulemeester were both part of the original Antwerp Six, a group of fashion designers who graduated from Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts between 1980–81.
Let's start with the easy one. For the house's SS '20 collection at Paris Fashion Week, Ann Demeulemeester's creative director Sébastien Meunier took a more literal route, creating a collection from black sailor berets, long and short variations of pea coats and captain's coats, lace-up blouses, mesh tops, and of course the iconic, low-cut (almost nipple-bearing) A-shirt worn by Bad Davis in "Querelle." But the house has an historic template rooted in its DNA, leaning toward elements of period dress (18th and 19th centuries), and Meunier thankfully indulged that side of the brand. It is the thing that the house does beautifully so we end up with some New Romantic, swashbuckling, Pirate-y pieces that recall Westwood.
Now, on to the darker, more abstract interpretation. Dries Van Noten is a master of pattern and to reflect "Querelle"'s violent storyline and feral, animalistic sexuality, he chose to employ a jaguar print. As a counterpoint, he used floral patterns to express an aspect of Genet's writing in which the author uses poetic, lyrical, almost holy phrases and words to describe a seedy underworld of criminals. In fact, two of his novels are entitled OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS and THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSE. Among high cut leather shorts, colors that imitate the lurid lighting of the film, and variations on the pea coat and captain's coat, we see cotton and mesh versions of the low-cut A-shirt Davis as Querelle wore in the film.
https://www.anndemeulemeester.com/
https://www.driesvannoten.be/
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