On any given day during fashion week a scene as such might be found –
In the choir of a Protestant church on Rue St Honoré, Courtney Love is wearing a single spoon earring that sways back and forth as she chats emphatically with Jared Leto. A demonic baby doll is slewn across a mattress in the middle of the floor. Nico’s Chelsea Girl begins playing and a dainty girl in a little nightdress kneels onto the mattress and picks up the baby. She cradles and rocks it, and then begins to violently throw it around and strangle it, twisting its horns to distort the sound and now the show begins. This is- Enfants Riches Déprimés.
Henry Levy explores counter-culture with what I’ve interpreted as a slew of cinematic references. Alongside heavy nodes to films of Roman Polanski, we also see a sort of insane asylum/ Ivy League/ needle park chic that evoke the aesthetic codes of films like Girl, Interrupted, Bonnie and Clyde, Wild at Heart, and Natural Born Killers. A sort of lawless, boot-stomping, intellectual-sexy. Lots of leather. Pinstripes and satin garter belts. A cigarette butt necklace. Deconstructed sharp-tailoring with binding hardware. Purity and blasphemy meet for a study date in hell. Internet-age Constantine. If you call the right number and say all the right things, you might be taken to a motel room off Route 66 and find yourself in Levy’s red-lit dreamscape.
Together, the collection is a masterfully subversive take on dark academy, icons on the lam, and back room fantasies. By far the most entertaining show yet. Bravo!
