Melitta Baumeister is softening her approach for AW22.
“Who cares what I thought about when designing this collection,” begins Melitta Baumeister when prompted about her AW22 show. The designer began describing the thoughts she had when crafting the storyboard, and they included a sense of softer hyper-reality that parallels a world where the pandemic is beginning to loosen its grip on reality, and we emerge back onto the spirit of dynamic life.
Baumeiter’s message is simple: wanting to get in touch with each other and communicate personal truth together. Her fascination with sculpturesque shapes and creations has been a personal signature across her collections, however this time around there is a delicate softness to her shaping, especially through the plissé techniques, draping and shaping intricacy through bold colours like vibrant red and eclectic yellow. “For a long time I used to be all about a hyperreal, not man made appearance of garments, dreaming of having them industrially made to a perfection like car parts. Which was an exciting idea for that time, but disconnected from the human touch. This approach has been softening over the seasons, moving closer to the human, inviting drapes and free forms,” shares Baumeister.
Et voilá, like a hand-blown ceramic vase, dresses create a bulbous base at the bottom, creating a cylindrical interpretation of the human body, or skirts protrude outwards through a circular gathering at the hems, completed through slim, gathered sleeves on chocolate heavy-cotton shirts, or beanie hats rising upwards, moulding into shapes that urge you to morph into an art-piece, cool and modern, demanding a campy sense of dimension.
