For spring/summer ’27, August Barron is ready for its close-up, sending crystal-covered slips, undone eveningwear and stripper heels down a runway devoted to the making – and unmaking – of a star
For spring/summer '27, August Barron went looking for stardom somewhere between the dressing room and the inevitable comedown, because Hollywood glamour has always looked more interesting once the mascara starts to run. Presenting its ninth collection, Walk of Fame, at Paris' La Cigale, the collection included a cast of references that stretched from Sunset Boulevard and Boogie Nights to They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and All That Jazz: films populated by chasing fame, clinging to it, or discovering what happens once the shine of stardom begins to dull.
The setting made an appropriately dishevelled supporting act. Models walked beneath a travelling spotlight towards a mirrored sculpture. It was conceived as an imagined dressing room post-meltdown: lipstick and powder stains, pink feathers and crushed cigarettes included. Hair appeared frozen mid-gust, whilst wig caps and wigs stuffed into purses suggested somebody running late for an audition, or perhaps making a swift exit from one.
If the room showed glamour after the fall, the clothes caught it somehwere in mid-air. Foulards appeared permanently windblown, whilst Marilyn Monroe's famously airborne white pleated gown from The Seven Year Itch appeared reworked. Such a distinction matters dearly. Designers Bror August Vestboø and Benjamin Barron were less interested in costume than in the unreliable glamour of a memory: familiar Hollywood images distorted through new fabrics and silhouettes until they became something else entirely.