Dear Shaded Vieweres,
In a city defined by its relentless pursuit of the new, Charlie Le Mindu’s Red Capsule Collection lands with the impact of a fever dream—both stylistic statement and somber confessional. Here, artistry and emotion are not opposites but collaborators, woven together in a tactile masterclass that flirts with the lines between couture, costume, and catharsis.
Le Mindu’s approach this season is less about commercial appetite, more about the pleasures of pure expression. Each piece channels a parade of technical bravado that can’t help but conjure the energy of backstage theater. His signature technique? Human hair, embroidered, beaded, tangled with fur and cowrie shells—a decadent clash of materials referencing both high fashion and the diaspora’s storied savoir-faire. This is not simply hair as adornment; it is hair as sculpture, spectacle, and, crucially, as storyteller.
The shapes feel alive—haunted by the physical transformations that consumed Le Mindu during a deeply personal depression in Los Angeles. Skulls, soft tissues, and viral motifs—strange, almost medical, but rendered infectious in their beauty—emerge as beadwork and embroidered details. There’s a sincerity to the collection that resists prettification: laser-etched and shaved coats evoke the unpredictability of skin, a literal extension of the body’s vulnerabilities.
Red—chosen for its symbolism and personal history—dominates, a visual heartbeat pulsing through each look. The tone pays homage to women who shaped the designer’s early world (“a rhythmic way of living”), and nowhere is this homage more sharply felt than in muse Aweng Chuol. She moves through the everyday—city streets, schoolyard basketball courts—her presence turning banality into a runway. In Le Mindu’s vision, the juxtaposition of Aweng’s glamour against urban grit sidesteps cliché and makes a case for fashion’s ability to electrify the mundane.
There’s avant-garde wit, too. Fur-draped boxing gloves, bomber dresses stuffed with wigs (twenty-five, to be exact), and headgear engineered from dry herbs. Le Mindu plays with the politics of hair, weaving together yak and human, cornrow and fishtail, herb and synthetic, until each item reads like a provocation. If there’s an organizing obsession at work, it’s the irreverent and liberating placement of hair on places society supposes we shouldn’t want it: “Everyone should be hairy,” the designer declares, diagnosing his own fixation as the purest source of joy.
For Le Mindu, obsession is the point, and Red is his medium—at once a warning, a celebration, and a deeply personal badge of survival. The result is a collection that refuses everyday conventions pressing us to dust off our fantasies and—if only for the duration of a city block—see the possibilities in the parade of the everyday.
Later,
Diane
Creative Director, Designer
Charlie LE MINDU @charlielemindu
Creative Assistant
Charlotte ABALÉ GNAHORÉ @charlotte_abale
Photography
Joaquin CASTILLO @thejoaquincastillo
Talent
Aweng CHUOL @awengchuol (IMG Models @imgmodels)
Styling
Dax REEDY @____dax______
Styling Consultants
Jack NOVOTNY @jacknovotny__
Ava ANITA @kount.kuntessa
Hair
Charlie LE MINDU @charlielemindu
Hair Assistant
Natalia BORGES @nati_______
Makeup Artist (MUA)
Sophie HARTNETT @sophie_hartnett
Nails / Production Assistant
Nirina METZ @lalimerence
Casting
Ti NGUYEN
Maya LOUISE
@11811.casting
Photography Assistants
Pablo GONZALEZ @pablogonzez
Sebastian REYES @Sebastianreyes9
Associate Producers
Sophia BAYATMAKOO @sophiabayatmakoo
Javier PADILLA GONZALEZ @posteroticism
