Coming off a banner year in which they were named LVMH Prize finalists and changed the name of their brand (from All-In to August Barron) Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø are starting a new chapter. Their new collection, “Bedtime Story,” celebrated the art of willfully, gleefully letting go. “We had this idea about going through our archive and throwing all the garments in the air and having them fall and kind of explode in slow motion,” explained Barron, “and it made us think a bit about Alice in Wonderland.”
And so the designers fell with abandon down a rabbit hall of their own making. At its end was a teenage world of wonder and becomingness, vulnerability and celebration that is tied up in bows. In contrast to the real world, fairy dust and confetti fell from the skies, rather than bombs. The vibe, Vestbø said, was “prom in a gym hall meets princess ’70s.”
A starting off point was the delicious, confectionery triple ball gown skirts from spring. For fall, skirts along these lines were paired with polos that received the AB treatment; cut slightly oversized, they were draped to the side and bow-tied. A tulle skirted ball gown had a tank top and there were dresses made of ribbons that looked like they were taken from the top of a box and slipped right onto the body. A zip-front top had puffy Snow-White sleeves. Unicorns pranced across a Fair Isle sweater in cotton candy pink.
Barron explained that he and Vestbo were interested in “taking traditionally masculine garments and feminizing them,” which explains the so-narrow-as-to-look-almost-shrunken tux in baby blue, paired with another polo variant, this one with a built-in, tulle-wrapped bustier. The prom queen’s counterpart was a romantic jock who wore a big-shouldered football jersey featuring confetti embroidery. This dressed-up jersey was festooned with a gold fabric boutonniere, side-stripe and sweatpants, a cummerbund, and heels fit for a Disney princess, which deserve their own velvet display cushion. (The brand’s popular level boot is on offer for fall in a scrunchy edition.)
Vintage stuffed animals, sourced on-line, were “suspended” from dreamy dresses, a reminder, perhaps, of the transitoriness of youth. Vestbø, who saw in this collection “a kind of continuation of the idea of freezing perfect moments in time,” noted that fall’s lineup was “not as wrong, maybe, as usual.” It’s true that the awkwardness here was more in line with the teenage theme than a sense of “offness.” And that’s what made this collection feel so right. In ugly times, August Barron invite us to linger, briefly, in a world of magic and encourage suspension of disbelief; to consider not the decline of Western civilization but a beautiful fall into imagination and wonderment.