Kiko Kostadinov Spring 2024 Menswear Collection

“Clothes about characters, and clothes about clothes,” read a line in the show notes placed on each seat at Kiko Kostadinov’s spring show this morning. Ah, at last! Clothes about clothes. During a menswear season that has mostly revolved around spectacle, it was energizing to witness Kostadinov’s commitment to making subtle yet conspicuous pieces.

The Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La Ricotta (1962) served as this collection’s esoteric inspiration. The short film offered a myriad of references, informing the structure of the lineup, its color palette, and Kostadinov’s overall treatment of manhood in its early stages. The movie’s black and white scenes—starring Orson Wells as Pasolini himself—translated as sections darker in color and with dashes of evening-ready elegance, while its strokes of saturated colors informed the hues of yellow, teal, and pink punctuating the collection.

But it was the technical nuances with which Kostadinov adorned his tailoring and knitwear that stood at the center of his efforts today. A double-breasted jacket had its lapel removed in favor of a hanging oversized shirt collar, while the body of a simple black coat was pleated and the plackets of a white button down shirt, which was here worn as a jacket, were duplicated. Trousers were pleated multiple times at the waist, shawl collar jackets were highlighted by satin detailing, and a sleeveless jumpsuit—the cut of its torso mimicking a dress vest—was nipped ever so slightly at the waist. Knitted vests with tiny lapels and pleated bodices offered playful interpretations of traditional tailoring in the context of boyhood.

Most subtle but striking were a run of jersey tops constructed with fifteen darts. Their delicate and organic draping exemplified the way Kostadinov employs his deft technical eye to playfully reimagine the surfaces of clothes while keeping them wearable. “For every garment I work on, the goal is to delete the origin of it,” the designer said of his design approach, “if you reference a ’50s jacket, how do you delete that beginning?” This mindset is why, in a season at capacity of tailoring proposals, Kostadinov’s stood out for their freshness and directionality. A clear example of what happens when designers actually center the garment while making clothes.

Another of Kostadinov’s highbrow references today was the spatial work of the American artist Tom Burr. The designer explained that Burr’s work informed the surface machinations in his collection—the aforementioned tacking, draping, and darting—and the re-contextualization of the lycée as a “liminal space” between the show, the backstage, and what informs it. Items of Kostadinov’s past collections were left on hangers placed in front of bookshelves on the hall outside the show space. “I’ve been finding seasonal themes every collection, but I think this is the last I’ll approach in this way,” he said. “We’ve been going for 15 seasons, so I want to start self-referencing now.” With bookshelves full of encyclopedias turned into a library of his own archives, one can’t help but wonder what Kostadinov will send down the runway once he starts making clothes about his own clothes.