Kévin Germanier, the “Frankenstein” of upcycled fashion

(Paris) Swiss designer Kévin Germanier, a pearl and colour ace who showed in Paris on Tuesday, belongs to the young generation of uninhibited and dazzling designers who have made the new Parisian fashion scene famous since the Olympic Games.

“In the fashion world, we like everything to be “slick“(immaculate, Editor’s note), but I see myself a bit like a Frankenstein with my experiments in tinkering with my little things,” the 32-year-old designer warns from the outset.

His style is regressive, playful, colorful, lamé between giant pompoms, pearls taken from a creative case and great mastery of haute couture know-how.

In a refreshing “cocktail pick” spirit, the designer has proposed an astonishing figure weighed down by small multi-colored metallic fringes.

It is on this rising name, a darling of editors and fashionistas, that the costume designer for the Paris Olympic Games this summer, Daphné Bürki, has set her sights for the closing ceremony.

During the nine months of top-secret preparation of the costume of the “Golden Voyageur” ​​who launched himself in a golden jumpsuit from the roof of the Stade de France, Kévin Germanier says he “lived the experience of a lifetime”.

“It’s the biggest platform I’ve ever been given,” he adds, still wide-eyed two months later.

Vogue hailed “the most impressive costume of the ceremony.” Internet users went wild over this silhouette of a flying creature, half wasp, half mosquito, half firework.

“Dealing with the trash”

Like all this generation, by conviction as much as by necessity, the stylist has made a religion ofupcycling or upcycling: the use of fabric scraps, stock materials and other unsold items.

It all started during an internship in Hong Kong, with bags of pearls “too close to the window which had faded in the sun,” says Kévin Germanier.

” L’upcyclingit’s not going to a thrift store vintage and doing something with a t-shirt is really doing something with garbage,” he explains.

The Swiss, born in Granges in the canton of Valais, grew up in the skirts of his mother and grandmother, already noticing that “we sewed a flower when there was a hole in it rather than going to buy a new one”.

Encouraged by his family, he enrolled in the prestigious London school Central Saint Martins.

“All my projects were black, grey and beige and, for my graduation collection, as I had nothing to lose since I already knew I had a job waiting for me at Vuitton, I said to myself: everything must shine.”

“Small bread”

Since then, the man with the air of the ideal son-in-law, impeccable side parting, dressed in black from head to toe, only does… in the dazzling color.

“It’s a joke,” he jokes. “Humour and being offbeat are important in this profession,” the designer insists, recalling that he “makes dresses with feathers and sequins. We’re not curing a disease, so everything’s fine.”

The adopted Parisian, “very close to figures like all Swiss”, nevertheless cultivates his entrepreneurial culture with method and success has brought him to the locker room of Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift.

“Fashion is first and foremost a business, it’s important to find the product that will sell like hotcakes […] so a perfume, a small bag or a scarf,” he notes.

Her bestseller is a small, multi-coloured baguette bag made from pearl straps, which is very pop.

Recruited by LVMH to rummage through stocks and recycle waste through a “kept secret” project, the ambitious designer, who dreams of a position as artistic director at Dior, repeats that it is by entering this kind of house “that you can really make things change.”

But transforming waste into beauty must remain a pleasure rather than a calling: “I don’t know if it’s my destiny, but as long as I create, it will be part of my process and, when I have less fun, I will stop,” warns Kévin Germanier.