After designing Viktor & Rolf’s teenage angst-inspired catwalk last fall, Studio Job has done it again. At this month’s Paris Fashion Week, the Dutch fashion brand debuted its grey melange-inspired women’s ready-to-wear collection through an equally bold streetscape scenography. Both shows mark Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel’s exlporation beyond cartoon-themed opulence, favouring a more selective use of quirky detail.
'We were travelling with Viktor & Rolf in the middle east by car. The roads there are long, dusty, warm and abandoned. Meanwhile we – more or less – constantly played this stupid riddle where someone sticks a piece of paper on your forehead with a persons name and you have to guess who you are. At one moment, Nynke was David Byrne and we talked further about Talking Heads and how cool and important this band was in the eighties,' explains Smeets. 'Road to Nowhere was Rolf's favourite song. So we talked about songs with roads or highways in them, you know how things go. Personally, I'm Deranged from David Bowie's Lost Highway soundtrack is my favourite highway-song. But we all liked Highway to Hell.'
Echoing Viktor & Rolf’s felted Paris flagship, their latest collection features dense textures and surreal knitwear. A similar muted complexity defines the recent catwalk’s maze-like backdrop – intertwined roadways running through endless overpasses. Models appear to come off the page, as they walk down the catwalk. Along the way, exaggerated street lamps join oversized street markings.
