The brilliant designer walks us through her covetable S/S19 Martine Rose Napapijri collection
- TextTed Stansfield
Martine Rose, one of the most important and quietly influential menswear designers working today, has, for the last two and a half years, enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Napapijri – the Italian brand whose signature ‘rainforest’ jackets you’ll doubtless be familiar with.
“Like all my collaborations, it started very organically,” Rose tells Another Man, casting her mind back to the beginning of this partnership. “My friend Luca Benini at Slam Jam introduced me to the Napapijri team. He proposed me for the project thinking it was a good fit. He was correct.”
Today, on AnotherManmag.com, Rose reveals the very latest instalment of this collaboration, showcased in a lookbook photographed by Heji Shin. “The inspiration for S/S19 used an entirely new approach: the creation of a seasonless collection,” she says. “Prints took a variety of inspiration, from early 90s UK garage and sportswear graphics to art deco upholstery fabrics and aerial views of rural landscapes across the American Midwest.”
Rose goes on to say how the root of the collaboration’s success lies in its believability: “It’s not a stretch,” she explains. “Napapijri Martine Rose has many crossovers with our mainline collection, it’s a natural extension of what we do here but in a slightly different way for a slightly different market. Napapijri Martine Rose acts like another arm to Martine Rose. It’s also about attitude, which is evoked in fairly different ways with each label but has shared roots in subculture and history.”
In addition to a lookbook, which can be seen in the gallery above, the collection is brought to life in a short film created by two of the designer’s longtime collaborators: the photographer and filmmaker Sharna Osborne, and the stylist Tamara Rothstein. Shot in Osborne’s trademark style, the video harks back to the 1990s; the British youth culture of that time and the music that soundtracked it.
As for the collection itself, it represents a modern luxury, a covetability – designed to wear all year round, these are clothes that men will buy, wear, see their friends wearing and feel envious. And that reflects Rose’s talent as a menswear designer and her incredibly clever approach: “When I design any collection I ask myself whether it’s new or relevant,” she says. “There has to be a sense of place and that’s either in proportion or fabrication. There also has to be a balance of tension in the garment. Lastly, I ask myself is it functional, because underneath it all, with menswear, there has to be functionality with the garment.”
Martine Rose Napapijri S/S19 will be available soon at select retailers such as Slam Jam, SSENSE and more
