JOHN RICHMOND SPRING SUMMER 2018 COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK

A study in 3.0 images. John Richmond grabs your attention and keeps you scrolling down, like a social network, your eyes filled with references and unprecedented symbols. The British designer is back for spring-summer 2018 with an alert diaporama on the runway, rebels with a good cause.

A caravanserai featuring input from the Richmond street gang, a tribe of lightning speed. The collection is inspired by a scrapbook of intelligent notes, developing a mood linked to the most symbolic of metropolitan subcultures. To ensure every single detail is forefront in the mind, the brand has forged objects that play with a collective subconscious packed with memories and images. John Richmond’s new concept of femininity is a mash-up of different codes.

It calls on the fearsome Japanese bōsōzoku bands, break beat from Harlem, teddy girls and bling bling from the golden age of hip hop, again in grey scale. It extrapolates something from each one to create women with humungous boomboxes who climb astride motorbikes and zoom off to a concert by Iggy Pop or Siouxsie and the Banshees. The rhythm picks up. And it’s not just the music that has you moving.

“New wave, punk, electro and industrial noise—this is a festival of musical intelligentsia where psychedelic inflections and reflections from very different cultures find a new dimension in fashion, moving towards the future, preserving the quid that has made this label famous.” To quote John Richmond.