After sharpening Cacharel’s Lolita aesthetics for four seasons, Cédric Charlier goes his own way. A loss for Cacharel, who’s nonchalant and refreshing collections became a must-see during Paris womenswear, but a new beginning for the Belgian designer.
Cédric Charlier welcomes us in the Parisian headquarters of his production company Aeffe group, set in the heart of the lively neighbourhood of Le Marais . He seems calm and relaxed, though we assume he’s boiling inside – the first season is always the toughest. That said, there is no need for an existential crisis: Charlier’s first show during Paris Autumn-Winter 2012/13 womenswear was warmly welcomed and the press literally attacked the backstage area straight after the finale. Furthermore, founding your own brand just seems like the most logical reaction to the current unstable state of the fashion industry. With designers being constantly replaced or at least speculated to, according to the buzz of gossip, it is more than natural for a creative mind to long for stability. “I’m just very happy to be on my own now. Cacharel was a great step in my career, but having the possibility to gain total creative freedom is just irreplaceable,” Charlier confirmed when asked for an opinion about the current fashion world game of musical chairs.
After seeing the first looks, we were convinced he’s made the right decision! Charlier is about a confident woman now, the one wearing sleek and feminine silhouettes made out of leathers and lurex, not the girly girl in silk muslin. “Pointing out one certain type of woman, like ‘the Yves Saint Laurent woman’ doesn’t work anymore; women don’t follow one creative dictatorship. I don’t work with thematic ideas from one season to another; I prefer to work with moments and thereby try to fully express femininity. That’s a lot already, there’s no need to overload the subject”, explains Charlier.
Charlier opts for discreet shades such as dark green, bordeaux, night blue, sheer black and plain white, with occasional hints of shimmery copper and a few colorful painted-like prints. His patterns also evolved, if you compare his first independent season to his former work for Cacharel: while keeping masculine codes in his collection, the designer chose a flattering and fitted silhouette, redrawing the natural curvature of a woman’s body with every single back, breast and waist dart. Furthermore, Cédric Charlier experimented with opaque fabrics such as boiled and laminated wool, leathers and vinyls, by playing with skin-revealing cuts and pairing them with sheer silks for example – a way of creating a second skin, according to the designer’s statements. “If you have a closer look at the garments, you will realize that nearly each silhouette has an evident cut – you’d see a change of texture around the waist or at the sleeves – the transition from a rawer to a softer fabric, it’s my way of breathing airiness into a garment,” he told Sleek. Meeting Charlier turned out to be a pleasant discovery, and his new path is definitely worth following.