Burning Man usually isn’t associated with high fashion, but this didn’t stop Indian designer Manish Arora from bringing head-to-toe Burner looks to the hallowed runways of Paris Fashion Week. While Arora is known for his avant-garde ensembles – often being compared to John Galliano – this collection walks a very fine line between high fashion and full-on festival.
Face paints, colourful dreadlocks on white girls, post-apocalyptic references, fanny packs, masks and head dresses are all common staples on the runways of London, New York, Paris and Milan, but when you put them together in a certain way you get a look that instantly brings the notorious Nevada festival to mind. Members of the fashion community and celebrities regularly attend the event — infamous for creating a dystopian city in the middle of Black Rock Desert, where attendees “burn the man” — but its most famous demographic is Silicon Valley. Still, Arora is not someone who just stumbled upon the festival — he is a six-year Burner veteran.
You don’t need to look far to find the Indian designer’s Burning Man receipts – his Instagram feed is loaded with them. The moon boots, sequin embellishments and pastel dreadlocks seen in his photos taken at the 2018 festival bear an uncanny resemblance to looks that he sent down the runway today. But even his previous collections have also tiptoed around the subject – emphasising technicolor sequins, psychedelic embroidery and feather headdresses – it has never been so explicit as in his AW19 show. Here, he uses faux-fur unicorn hoodies with flower crowns, bedazzled goggles (perfect for riding around the Nevada desert) and the opening look is a hooded cape with flames, not to mention the literal Burning Man print on some of the pieces.
The sculpture and fashion of the festival are rarely regarded as high art, partially because on average, the people appreciating them are taking more acid than the front row fixture or museum-goer. Still, other counter-culture movements like grunge and punk have been taken more seriously after receiving attention from designers like Vivienne Westwood or Marc Jacobs.
Maybe the collection will prompt the fashion community to look at the style of Burning Man in a new light, after all, you always hear about how “transformative” the experience is. For Manish Arora at least, this definitely rings true.
Photos courtesy of Manish Arora