When we were kids, creating forts with our LEGOs was pretty commonplace. Sometimes we would get a little creative and make our LEGO people ride horses into that fort and or create giant LEGO towers and use them as swords (maybe that's true for only part of the FADER staff). Still, managing hundreds of tiny colorful LEGO pieces into a moving storyline was beyond our grasp.
Now electro-flash French designer, J.C. de Castelbajac, has created a LEGO-inspired Spring 09 collection. But it seems that LEGO has decided to strike back! A video popped up recently with a virtual runway show of the collection using tiny models in even tinnier J.C. de Castelbajac pieces. Even sunglass-wearing fashion critics are present, clapping and snapping photos of the make-believe scene. We're starting to wonder, will LEGOs be in the next Terminator movie? Likely not, but at least we know they have good taste.
Check out style editor Chioma Nnadi's story on Jean Charles de Catelbajac for FADER issue 41 after the jump.
Story Chioma Nnadi
Photography Dorothy Hong
With coats made out of cuddly toys, prehumous Basquiat collabos, and dresses plastered with life-size images of Jackie O, for over three decades Jean Charles de Castelbajac has been making clothing that snootier designers might call “art.” “I always prefer to look forward rather than back, so it was a little scary looking through the archives,” says the French designer who recently curated Popganda, a retrospective of his work, at London’s V&A museum earlier this year. “Surprisingly, everything still seemed so modern—the shapes, the ideas—people couldn’t believe the date on the clothes.” Thankfully, JCDC, as his new buddies Kano and MIA like to call him (“The kids came to my exhibition wearing my Iceberg cartoon characters—it was fantastic!”), has too much fun with his clothes to take himself too seriously. “Some designers are close to opera, others to cinema, personally I’ve always felt closest to the TV generation,” he says.
Finally returning to the drawing board for a Stateside relaunch this fall, his new collection is an echo of his landmark exhibit. All the classic Castelbajac nods are in there—stunning floor length blanket coats (a favorite with Lauren Bacall back in the day), teddy bear scarves, cartoon characters and smiley fanged faces, all neatly wrapped in Anglomania homage (Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren are his other best friends). But this time around, Castelbajac translates the fun into an altogether more feminine, wearable form. “My favorite designers have always been the American greats. Stephen Sprouse, Geoffrey Beene and Charles James, who I met the first time I came to New York. It’s always been such a lucky place to me,” says Castelbajac, who hopes to bring Popaganda to New York later this year. Then he adds, “If you meet TV on the Radio, please tell them I love their work and next time I’m in town I want to make them outfits!”