Victor Glemaud Resort 2023 Collection

Victor Glemaud asks himself two questions when working on a new collection. “I always think, What is the shape? How does it show on the body?” he says over a Facetime call from his studio while showing off what is perhaps the crown jewel dress from his resort collection: a black engineered stripe sleeveless shift with a little mockneck. The vertical stripes, in alternating shades of red, blue, pink, white, and yellow, start in a straight formation at the top and as they move down towards the hem, they curve in and out, mimicking the curves of the woman who will eventually come to wear it, and finish as thin points at the end. In the lookbook, it hugs the curves of the musician Amber Mark, and yet it still retains a sense of ease.

“We had to place every single stripe individually. Depending on the pattern of the dress or the body or the skirt, it’s a separate pattern and placement,” the designer explained (this same design also appeared on a matching set of a bandeau top and a pencil skirt). “Our technical designer was not happy when she saw these first sketches,” he added laughing. “It took more than six months to develop and it was very much a nail biter of will we get it? Will we not?” Glemaud’s mastery of his chosen material is certainly evident in these pieces.

The collection was inspired by the work of John Chamberlain, specifically his Baby Tycoons series, some of which was recently on display at Hauser & Wirth. “It was all these miniature [pieces] that you could hold in your hand,” Glemaud recalled, “and they had all these great color combinations, so we took the colors from that and really the idea of mixing things together like the vertical stripes and the colorblocking, which is something that I always sort of do but hadn’t done in the last couple of seasons.”

He continues to push the possibilities of his collection forward with the recent introduction of cut and sew dresses, which allow for further experimentation, as in the long sleeved turquoise dress with its back fully cut out, or the flirty dresses that mix power mesh and ponte. “We’re taking that sort of old-school fabric that Donna Karan made really famous and just making it a bit more contemporary. The power mesh is knitted, but it holds you in a different way.” A highlight of this new direction was a little black dress, with a kicky skirt made of power mesh inserts that looks made for dancing. With clothes this fun, who wouldn’t want to hit the dance floor?