Born somewhere between Palm Springs and Los Angeles, Ann Demeulemeester SS27 turns Stefano Gallici’s desert memories into a story of sun-bleached decay, worn-out uniforms, rock music and clothes that seem to carry the traces of a previous life
For his seventh collection at Ann Demeulemeester, titled Lonesome Heaven, Stefano Gallici draws from a personal experience, or rather, from the feeling of a moment lived in solitude.
He recalls a precise image: alone in his car, driving back to Los Angeles through the desert near Palm Springs. Almost like a photograph, we can picture him watching the empty horizon drift past the window, with Kyuss’ Welcome to Sky Valley playing at full volume.
The record brings back memories of his adolescence in northeastern Italy, when rock bands from Eastern Europe would pass through the small independent clubs in the area. The dense, heavy sound of Kyuss collides with the silence of the desert surrounding him: two seemingly opposite extremes that ultimately produce the same deafening sensation.
It is there that Gallici begins to imagine the new collection, stripping everything back to its essentials. Starting with the colour palette: White, Black and Blue Dust. White moves through natural shades of ivory, chalk and ecru; black shifts from faded tones to deep, glossy surfaces; while Blue Dust originates in uniforms and workwear before expanding into sun-bleached pale blue and destroyed denim.
The desert enters the collection through more than colour alone. The clothes themselves seem to have been left exposed to wind, dust and sun, carrying traces of time across their surfaces. Natural satin is stained as if by rust, cardigan edges unravel into long threads, striped cottons resemble faded mechanic uniforms, leather is worn and denim is torn and stitched back together like a scar. Even the suits appear so distressed that the white lining emerges from beneath the black silk.
Gallici also looks to centuries past, but without turning the collection into a historical reconstruction. His approach is far more personal. He describes it through another image:
“as if the younger me had discovered an old wardrobe in the attic and started playing with it.”
Different eras and codes are freely mixed together: Edwardian elements, Napoleonic jackets, tuxedos, military uniforms, workwear, denim and rock references coexist without any strict hierarchy. They are fragments of the past brought into the present, worn down and recombined until they become something personal.
During his stay in Los Angeles, Gallici also visits Howard Hughes’ old hangar. The empty spaces, raw walls and dust lead him towards the imagery of aviation and uniforms. Aviator jackets, aeronautical codes and military constructions consequently enter the collection. In some looks, feathers applied to the shoulders of a Spencer jacket symbolically replace military epaulettes: something originally functional and martial is transformed into something fragile, romantic and purely ornamental.
Then there is another Los Angeles. The one Gallici describes as “California gothic”: a city where California’s sun-drenched perfection turns into something gloomy, foggy and decaying. It is a sun-bleached kind of decay, slowly eroding surfaces and clothes.
But the image from which everything began, Gallici alone in his car in the desert, with Kyuss playing in the background, ultimately becomes more than just a reference.
It becomes real.
Josh Homme, a founding member of Kyuss, appears on the runway wearing a pinstripe suit paired with a light denim shirt. The sound that accompanied Gallici at the beginning of the journey thus physically enters the show.
Closing the show is Ethel Cain, wearing an Edwardian-inspired black Chantilly lace dress developed together with Gallici. The collaboration also anticipates a capsule collection between the American artist and Ann Demeulemeester.
Ultimately, Lonesome Heaven seems to take shape through this constant movement between memory and reality. The desert, Kyuss, Gallici’s adolescence in northeastern Italy, Howard Hughes, old Hollywood, uniforms and worn-out clothes come together in a collection that seems to carry the traces of a previous life.
