Type “Kostas Murkudis” into Style.com’s search engine, and just two results pop up. The Berlin-based designer—who worked for many years alongside Helmut Lang, and who has run his own eponymous label since1994—signed on as creative director of the German sportswear brand Closed last year. He won’t be operating under the radar much longer. On Friday, Murkudis teamed with his longtime friend, the artist Carsten Nicolai, to present his first capsule collection for Closed, dubbed Skywalk, at Gallery Weekend Berlin. Nicolai provided the video, a hypnotic twelve-minute clip culled from twelve years of photographs he took from the window seats of airplanes, and Murkudis contributed the clothes, a utilitarian range of pieces, for both women and men, inspired by a vintage aviator jumpsuit. There are jersey tees and button-front shirts covered with zips and, of course, a flight suit, but the stars are the trench, made from a denim-like twill fused with superfine mousseline (above), and a leather bomber that reverses to the same twill.
The jackets and coats in his main collection for Closed are likewise worth getting excited about. The thirty-five-year-old brand, which at different times was headed up by François Girbaud and Martin Margiela, has long been denim-focused. “I want to go back to the roots, to make clear what Closed was,” Murkudis told Style.com. “It was the first brand to do designer denim; there was just Levi’s, Lee, Wrangler. The mix of denim, utilitarian, and sporty elements is quite key to Closed’s DNA.” Look for Murkudis’ debut collection for Closed when Fall collections begin arriving at Fred Segal and American Rag in Los Angeles, and at Project No. 8 in New York. And don’t miss our Gallery Weekend Berlin photo report.
—Nicole Phelps
No comments:
Post a Comment