All photos by Sonnyphotos
“AREA represented a blank space,” said Beckett Fogg, the label’s co-founder. Stark white hosted the glistening silhouettes at Nicholas Aburn’s show this season. The space evoked what a child would fantasize a New York fashion show would look like. Aburn’s first acid experience this summer, where he saw everyone as children, triggered his collection’s pursuit of the feeling of innocence. From playful two-toned sequins and childhood confetti to the recognisable long handle of a jump rope to the beach’s priceless treasures – shells and pearls – the models become emblems of a child’s brightest wishes, taken shape on the body.
The stark white was also an impressionable dream world, where light bounced around like a rubber ball let loose. Perhaps chasing this LSD-induced optical illusion, Aburn let light grab the viewer’s attention, reflecting off the confetti like the ultimate party icon: the disco ball. Aburn remains faithful to the downtown party girl that AREA caters to.
The press release – more like a Psychedelic Society poster crossed with a lighting-audit questionnaire – took me by pleasant surprise. The first page, black swirly text and patterns set upon a white page, is followed by 34 questions formatted in a grid, A1 to E8. Disarming, searching questions such as Is there difference between light and freedom?, What did you want to be when you grew up?, and When did you last speak to God? are woven between unassuming lighting questions. You are left wondering: does the stark white still evoke a child’s space of vivid imagination or does it now evoke a feeling of interrogation and vast uncertainty? What is the maximum brightness?
