Gustavo Lins is passionate about complex research to create perfect basics, a quest for simplicity and beauty within concealed technicality. Noble fabrics melt amongst themselves and the original materials fuse, offering a piece of clothing that is both evident and complex, uniquely feminine. “When I take up my pencil and a question arises, it’s still the kimono that helps me to find the aesthetic solution. Through its simplicity and rupture with bourgeois codes, (…) it translates and imposes a contemporary connotation,” he confirms. He describes his creative process as work done around a single common thread. “I always have tons of references, and the kimono helps me to funnel my design, my attention, and especially the proportions.”
The kimono’s timeless shape has always been fascinating, ever since 1900, when undulation and exoticism defined “nouvelle vogue”. Paul Poiret showed off colors, prints, and Japanese-inspired cuts. Madeleine Vionnet constructed knowingly sumptuous wrappings, hymns to movement. The kimono, a vague Japanese robe with ample sleeves and a large sash, became a key piece for the era. Gustavo Lins has been able to ingeniously reinvest this flourishing legacy in his workshops ever since 2003; he releases and deconstructs the kimono in numerous and multiple unique pieces, constructed directly on the models, in three dimensions. Translating a great technical mastery, his creations reflect never-before-seen experimentation with volumes: the body is the only constructive principal, the fabrics and their folds carry out a perfect symbiosis with its curves and lines. Gustavo Lins admits to only choosing noble materials for his creations; ever conscious of the environment, he confirms that he doesn’t want to work with polyamide or polymers.
For his latest collection called 020, the artist-couturier invites us into a universe where intimacy reigns and fluidity is structured. The evening kimono shows off twists and turns inspired by those of the human body. The round and subtly denuded shoulder is a nod to the Japanese belief that the neck is the most sensual part of the female body. This authentic simplicity conceals a complexity that is barely acknowledged. The fluid silk becomes sculptural, perfecting the female body with sound and light, in between layers of fabric and slivers of silk.
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