Marine Serre’s Path for the Future

Under the veil of darkness, Marine Serre’s Fall-Winter 2022 collection ushered her combined approach to upcycling, craftsmanship, and environmental responsibility towards the future. While stylistic flourishes have made her creations instantly recognisable – and new this season is a moon at the centre of a lozenge motif – Serre is as committed as ever to minimising the fashion industry’s environmental impact. From the design aspect to sourcing, production and distribution processes, the Gallic wunderkind paves the way for a greener, cleaner future, even as her operation expands. 

The magic of Marine Serre is best witnessed in her fabric manipulation: salvaged silk scarves are expertly upcycled to become slinky dresses while tartan scarves are spliced together as slick Harrington jackets. Each season, the designer explores domesticity and protection through silhouettes; here, she proposes cocoons assembled from Provençal boutis blankets. Focusing on the future of fashion through intertwined notions of resourcefulness and responsibility, Serre arrives at collections that feel particularly urgent. 

Fashion, Serre explains in an email, “is about a way to live, a way to act, and to get inspired.” 

Could you describe some key looks from the collection?
This collection features an extensive development of the House’s core materials with a fortification of key silhouettes and fabric manipulation. We wanted to focus our attention on the various fabrics imagining a fictional subculture for each of them. For instance, we created a new print, the ‘Moon Diamant,’ which sees the moon at the centre of a lozenge motif, that we scattered over puffer jackets and loose pants but also on tailored blazers and trousers evoking a character who would wear them to sport practice right after leaving the office. Another strong [grouping] recalls a collective living in an environment with extreme weather conditions; they are covered with various knits and regenerated pullovers carefully assembled and layered to prevent any exposed glimmer of skin, as well as protective cocoons made from Provençal boutis blankets.

Adrian Joffe once described your work as paving a “positive, planet-sensitive way forward.” How does sustainability appear in this collection?
In addition to our regeneration practice of re-adapting deadstock, end-of-life materials, and existing garments to create new products, which is the core of our House, we are putting in place tools to track and reduce our consumption in each step of the creative, sourcing, production and distribution processes. This can be noticed in the collection through lace shirts and dresses made from silk scarves, in tailored coats and Harrington jackets regenerated from tartan scarves, as well as in upcycled assembled t-shirts pieces, and so on. 

You hold strong beliefs about climate change and the environment. What is your wildest dream for the state of the world? 
As an independent House, we try to be part of shaping our common future toward a greater consciousness of the body, hybridity, and heterogeneity – all taken together under regenerative consciousness. This is about rethinking our future. It includes creating a new system; and within new supply chains, new ways to consume, to share, to communicate, to work, to imagine, to experience. 

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.