Martine Rose

THE CONCEPT

The designer’s interaction with different communities and cultures at young age inspires her aesthetic. Rose’s suiting and streetwear is stocked locally and internationally by the likes of Matches Fashion, Machine-A, Barneys New York and Ssense. Despite placing itself firmly in the menswear category, the label also taps into a growing fanbase of women. Through her label, Rose has collaborated with the likes of Been Trill, Timberland and CAT.

A strong and uniquely personal voice in fashion, her collections often read like love letters to the subcultures of the British working class – and nonconformist mentality which is also evident.

Fundamental to Martine Rose’s approach to her work is a seemingly simple question: why do people wear what they wear? It is an obsession she traces back to her childhood, when she would observe – and occasionally photograph – her big sister, Michelle, and their cousins getting ready to go out, scrutinizing and processing the real-life codes and customs that underlie notions of style.

Known for its blend of streetwear and suiting, exaggerated silhouettes and off-beat show concepts, Martine Rose has garnered a cult following over the years, with its namesake designer helping to shape the contemporary menswear space. A former consultant to Balenciaga’s menswear design team, Martine was a contender to succeed Virgil Abloh as Louis Vuitton’s menswear chief. The brand proves why her sharp eye for sub-cultural references and blurring of gender lines continue to have such a powerful impact on menswear.

Over the years since the label’s launch, progressive currents in men’s fashion have tended to push towards abstraction – from flights of fantasy veering towards fancy dress at one extreme to a fetishization of functionalism that risks vapidity at the other. Martine’s response to this has been to ground menswear in the particular and the real, before leading it somewhere new.

From football shirts cut in extreme proportions, to running shorts trimmed in French-maid lace, to tailored suits made from delicate fabrics meant for women’s lingerie, Martine Rose’s work balances the uniformity of men’s dress codes with the eccentric individualism for which London club culture was once famous, synthesizing conformity with idiosyncrasy, the ordinary with the oddball.
The designer’s insistence on focusing on the world she knows extends to how and where she presents her collections, often choosing show locations with a biographical connection: the Kentish Town primary school her daughter attends, or the Chalk Farm cul-de-sac that’s home to Tamara’s sister. She has taken an approach rooted in her own lived experience and the clothing choices of people she sees in everyday life, rather than arbitrary fashion references.

A vision of fusions

INVESTMENT LOCATION

SECTOR