Walking into Marie Adam-Leenaerdt, you are momentarily crestfallen. Arriving early you discover there are no chairs. A standing show? No, Leenaerdt has preoccupied herself with DIY solutions this season, and the project extends to her show seats: collapsible stools arranged on racks—pick one and sit wherever you want. The bad feeling passes; it’s actually rather fun choosing your own vantage point. You think to yourself: Adam-Leenaerdt is onto something with her ideas about personal choice and experimentation.
In fact, Adam-Leenaerdt has been doing her own thinking about versatility since the beginning of her label three years ago, but here, she came at it quite literally. In one case she showed wrap skirts made from material with an apron pattern printed on it (wear it as-is or cut out the pattern and start sewing), and in another she used fabric swatches from past collectsions for patchworks of orderly grids on skirts and more fluid bias-cut draping for dresses. Elsewhere, some of her outerwear was reversible: On its first exit, a robe coat was electric pink satin with brown faux fur lining peeking out at the edges; on its second tour the same model wore it outside-in.
Did she realize she’d landed on a concept not unlike the one Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons were pitching last week at Prada, when they proposed a mix-and-match palette of interchangeable options? Backstage she said, “I really wanted to do things the most simple way possible. Not something so complicated, because everything is already so complicated in the world.” And not only that: “it’s an answer to mass production, it’s more unique.” Team Prada isn’t about to tell you that smaller is better, but Adam-Leenaerdt, who is just turning 30 this week, seems to be of the mind that small can be beautiful. The sweetest idea this season was a prom dress in that same bright pink designed to look like your mom made it on her Singer.
