HYÈRES, France — Israeli designer Dolev Elron won the top prize at the 39th edition of the International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories – Hyères on Sunday.
He impressed the jury led by Courrèges artistic director Nicolas Di Felice with a collection of distorted menswear pieces entitled ‘Casual Turbulence’.
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Based in Stockholm and educated at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, Elron is a junior menswear designer at Acne Studios.
“It’s about distorting archetypes of hyper-masculinity and basic items that we all have in our closets – recognizable and familiar,” he said during a showroom presentation. “This familiarity brings comfort, and the comfort it brings allows room for disruption.”
To distort jeans, checked shirts or a bomber jacket, he was inspired by the ‘unusual and unexpected effects on the most expected garments’, which he first distorted using digital software such as Photoshop. The patterns he then developed from those new images relied on the striking details of each garment, such as zippers, jeans pockets or stripes because of their winding structures.
One of the highlights was the opening look with a shirt whose classic blue stripe was subtly warped, culminating in a sculptural yet discreet cuff; trousers with a belt that seemed to melt around the hip; and faux denim shorts, with a twill-meets-jacquard textile developed in collaboration with Lesage to fuse the swirling motifs in the fabric.
Di Felice praised the creative breadth of the 2024 fashion finalists and said he was moved by the rawness of the works, which were a reminder that “our professions involve so much passion and so much heart from start to finish,” he said. WWD. “We are in a transition period in fashion, so it is refreshing and important to see this.”
“There are no rules to be successful in fashion [anymore] and the last few years have shown us that you can become an artistic director even if you are a singer,” he continued.
He emphasized that today there is a much greater variety in design approaches and techniques – which “must be approached without judgement,” he noted – while still noting the importance of craftsmanship and know-how.
“There are so many professions that come from making a garment [something] amounts to an Instagram gimmick, I wonder if this is really fashion,” he said. “This raises real questions about what our [industry] is today.”
Courrèges’ artistic director hoped the finalists would walk away having taken the jury discussions and encouragement to heart. “Whatever our discipline, what we are doing is resisting, living. And it’s great just because they’re in the middle of it,” he said.
Paris-based Belgian designer Romain Bichot, a La Cambre graduate who recently joined Balenciaga as a junior designer, won both the Le19M Métiers d’Arts Prize in collaboration with Chanel and the L’Atelier des Matières Prize.
Inspired by a nighttime cityscape full of garbage bags, construction sites and traffic cones, “Call Me If You Get Lost” rearranges these objects into surreal looks, such as a dress with traffic cone protrusions or clutches shaped like the protective wrapping of a scaffolding. .
A luxurious embroidered and feather look he worked on with feather specialist Lemarié mimicked a mattress. It is inspired by a murder series that starts with a body rolled up in a mattress, according to the Belgian designer.
Bichot took home a cash prize of 20,000 euros for a project to be exhibited at the festival next year, and another 10,000 euros in materials from L’Atelier des Matières.
Thanks to a motorcycle jacket that fuses canvas from custom-made jackets and pieces from his father’s racing suits, American designer Logan Monroe Goff won the Mercedes-Benz Sustainability Prize, an award for the designer who best practices eco-conception in applied his work.
Texas native Monroe Goff is currently pursuing a master’s degree in fashion design at Parsons Paris and cut his teeth at Egonlab and Isabel Marant. He would like to continue gaining experience, but said his endgame was to have his own label, which “could happen in five or 20 years.”
His biggest takeaway from the Hyères experience – even before looking at prizes and purses – was being able to show what he had in mind in an unfettered way. “This opportunity is my biggest advantage and that is super cool.”
For his sweet ‘Sugar Rush’ collection inspired by instant gratification – complete with the Instagram-famous cake slice shoe – Tel Aviv-based Israeli designer Tal Maslavi received a special jury mention.
Berlin’s Gaëlle Lang Halloo’s football-inspired sportswear, which nods to France’s 1998 World Cup victory, won the hearts and votes of the public.
The top prize for accessories went to London-based Chinese designer Chiyang Duan and his ‘Distorted Objects’ collection, which capitalized on upgrades to extend the life cycle of glasses and bags and turn them into organic-looking creatures.
Meanwhile, La Cambre graduate Clara Besnard took on the challenge of making a belt or leather jewelry to win the Hermès Prize with a clutch of belts that looked as if they were hung casually around the neck like a scarf. The audience award went to Mexican designer Maria Nava and her robot creations that respond to the atmosphere.
A special accessory mention went to Swiss designer Camille Combremont, who took inspiration from her family’s camping holidays for a range of multi-functional accessories, ranging from a basket with a removable liner to a pretty cape that doubles as a tent. She is given a residence at the Achilles Ion Gabriel headquarters in Mallorca.
“It’s really a raw expression of young people, what they think design should look like, really unfiltered,” says accessories judge Imruh Asha, a stylist and creative consultant who co-founded fashion label Zomer. “Now we’re going to give them feedback and they’ll be biased forever, but this is what they think, still unfiltered.”
In photography, Arhant Shrestha, a graduate of Bard College and now based in Kathmandu, Nepal, walked away with the 7L Photography Grand Prize for his exploration of an imaginary nighttime version of his hometown, to “capture the nostalgia of my past imagination for the reality. of Kathmandu today could wash it away.”
Basile Pelletier from Paris took home the American Vintage prize with a series of analog photographs with a touch of strangeness, while the People’s Choice Award went to Clément Boudet.
British lensman Thomas Duffield received a special mention for capturing the eight-year process of rebuilding a relationship strained by addiction.
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