With his poet’s soul, Our Legacy’s Cristopher Nying has a knack for finding strength in fragility, as well as vulnerability in displays of masculinity. It’s a different way of looking at the world than the might-equals-right posturing so prevalent in America right now.
OL is opening a flagship in Paris, so the team moved their presentation there as well this season. With its focus on function and melancholy—concepts entwined in the Swedish psyche—this is one of the brand’s most Nordic collections. In their pursuit of “garments reduced to their most honest, prototypical form,” as the notes put it, the team studied authentic workwear, such as Swedish machinist jackets (traditionally engineered to take frigid temperatures into account). “Normally, I’ve been tweaking workwear in our way; we replace the style with a slightly different or more fashionable fabric, but this time I actually went into the original garments,” Nying explained on a call. The result is clothes that are anything but standard issue.
Certain items, based directly on archival workwear pieces, carry a new “right time and place” label that pays homage to their functional origins. One pair of chinos is made of the kind of khaki “that bleeds when you wash it, so it’s going to be lighter, lighter, lighter,” Nying said. The team’s approach to a tailored car coat is more interpretive. After examining Depression-era Swedish tweeds, they coated a “vintage look” wool on the outside, leaving the material as-is inside. Nying’s update to a reversible MA-1 is as significant as it is invisible; it is “insulated” with a proprietary, and wholly recyclable, filling made of factory scraps.
Providing a contrast to the purpose built garments are more poetic ones, featuring details like floral prints in a stick-and-poke style, self-tie rosettes, and wired or raw edges cut in light and sometimes transparent materials. These are styled with sturdy leathers, luxe suedes, and a fantastic metallic denim through which Nying is exploring a kind of sorrow—one very much in sync with the zeitgeist.
“It’s tragic and romantic,” said Nying of the mood he was conjuring. The gestural way the models grasp their fringed mantles is inward and protective. Having been raised in Sweden’s Bible belt, Nying was thinking back to when he was young and “you had to cover your shoulders in church.” This quiet sign of respect to a force other than money speaks volumes. “I think there’s a heavy noise [in fashion] and also in the world generally,” said Nying. He’s lowered the volume with a collection that is an even-toned master class in soft power.
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