At Ottolinger, Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient were thinking about performance.
Not of the stronger, better, faster type, but the one that we put on every day from morning to night, a show that starts at home in underwear.
“Then you throw on something because you go out to get groceries so it’s not so great but everything is performance in life,” said Bösch. “We all have to perform a certain way.”
Furthering their reflection on “how we are perceived and how we want to be perceived,” the soundtrack to the show was the inner dialogue of a model, written by Los Angeles-based artist, writer and theater director Calla Henkel.
The Berlin-based pair’s lineup was a smorgasbord of options going through to night, with plenty of party dresses to boot. But it wasn’t just clothing they challenged, with the additions of pads that made hips bulge here, padded out a shoulder there.
These elements further tweaked standouts such as tailored jackets pulled tight across the waist to create a basque; a biker blouson cut from felted wool bonded with scuba fabric; dresses with a deconstructed mesh print, or overdyed jeans with pockets pulled down to reveal the original denim as an accent.
Throughout, Bösch and Gadient worked with shapewear fabric, worn layered and deconstructed in Ottolinger-typical ways as tops, bodysuits and leggings that bared slivers of collarbones and midriffs.
Among them was a teaser for a collaboration, the duo said, although they demurred on naming a brand. For those who had their eyes peeled, labels for Kim Kardashian’s Skims could be spotted throughout, however.
