French designer Martine Sitbon, the former Chloé creative director whose insouciant, poetic collections helped define the 1990s, has announced a return to Paris Fashion Week in March 2023.
Titled Rev, the new project – backed by Iro founders Arik and Laurent Bitton – will see Sitbon reimagine her extensive archive for today. ‘Revisiting the past, into the future,’ stated a release this morning (2 February 2023).
‘A style, all in moving lines, between masculine and feminine, calligraphic appearances, loose and fluid. Androgynous chiffon,’ the announcement continued, noting that Rev will place focus on collaboration with Italian artisans. ‘A raw sense of individuality, preciousness and authenticity.’
Martine Sitbon to make Paris Fashion Week return with Rev
Martine Sitbon
As such, the showroom will been based in central Milan on Via Monte Di Pietà in a space designed by seminal British architect John Pawson. ‘Minimalism in an intimate and virtuous time,’ the brand says of the studio’s design.
The first collection will be unveiled during Paris Fashion Week in March 2023. ‘A singular universe, an attitude; a contemporary nonchalance written with silhouettes,’ the announcement teased.
Sitbon rose to prominence in the late 1980s, launching her eponymous label in 1986 in Paris. In 1987, she was made creative director of French fashion house Chloé, gaining a cult following through the 1990s for what Sitbon calls her ‘tenderly androgynous’ collections ‘tinged with youth’, an ‘alternative vision of femininity... sophisticated, ethereal, edgy, glamorous.’
Shalom Harlow backstage at Martine Sitbon S/S 1996
Sitbon’s work with longtime collaborators art director Marc Ascoli and photographers Nick Knight and Craig McDean provides some of the era’s most definitive and enduring imagery. She is also associated with the phalanx of 1990s supermodels who wore her clothing and walked in her shows – among them Kirsten Owen, Kate Moss, Kristen McMenamy and Stella Tennant.
Her eponymous label shuttered in 2004. In 2012, she was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite by the French government and in 2016, she released a Rizzoli-published monograph of her work, titled Alternative Vision.
‘Further from standards, closer to sensitivity,’ says Sitbon of this latest chapter.
See our guide for more on what to expect from Women’s Fashion Week A/W 2023.
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