Back to basics
Yoji Yamamoto, Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, Raf Simons, Haider Hackermann. Difficult names for an only apparently easy style.
Colour palette reduced to the bone: black and white elevated to conceptual values.
No room for ornaments.
Volumes only speak, deconstructed and reconstructed in an experimental way.
The fabrics, technical materials pushed at the forefront, towards haute couture.
The raw cuts, symbol of an "aesthetic of the unfinished".
Behind what we call "minimalism" there is a school of thought rooted in the motto "Less is more" by Mies Van Der Rohe, one of the fathers of the Modern Movement that at the beginning of the 20th century was the cradle of Bauhaus and Rationalism.
It then passes through the Japanese conceptual fashion of Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake and Yoji Yamamoto, and flourished in Antwerp, Belgium, where some young designers founded a movement that, under the banner of rigour and a return to the essential, marked the 1990s.
The minimalist style therefore has very little to do with a fast and "no-brainer" style. Quite the opposite, in fact. The elegance of the essential is made up of extraordinary attention to detail, which in its discretion, makes all the difference.
Like a strap added to a sublimely cut pair of basic Bermuda shorts (#look1).
Wear it with a white cotton shirt buttoned up to the neck and a pair of monk sandals.
Or like #look2: an apparently banal total black combo where, however, the polo shirt is made of a very precious jersey and has a heat-sealed zip.
And the caban plays with the deconstructed volume and live cuts.
Minimal means free of frills, where the focus is on the effort to enrich the garment with meaning. This implies an almost philological study and its reinterpretation in a purist key.
As in the white T-shirt, without logo yet in combed Egyptian cotton, of #look3, or in the very clean pants in fresh wool and mohair.
Or finally in the photographer's waistcoat, where the pockets, the snap buttons, the small zip-saver loop, everything is the subject of a thought, and nothing is too much.