The room–humid to the point of being wet, and wrapped in raw concrete–was as fitting a venue for the Danish label Rains’s spring collection as the torrid weather outside the space’s soaring windows. Exposed support columns leaked rainfall unintentionally. Square panels of milky white light flattened the ambiance, adding to the austerity. It was, as the brand’s head of design Tanne Vinter said, a setting befitting of outerwear created to be “something pure and very honest.”
What that meant from a sartorial perspective: Inventive yet slick elemental gear, conceived to evade precipitation but also to sort of celebrate it. Water-repellent textiles appeared, intentionally, as if soaked in water themselves. “Puckered, crinkled, gathered,” read the show notes.
The “pure” and “honest” details looked strong throughout: There was a freshness in seeing something as mundane as a raincoat get reinvented with rigor and a conscious lack of splash (despite the references to liquid).
A tiered, scarlet coat-slash-cape dress that closed the show was a knockout on the more avant-garde side of things, while a gathered-at-the-hem khaki-hued hooded jacket was the most stylish item by way of simplicity. Tasseled pieces, meant to evoke vertical rainfall, added an editorialized allure but would not be practical in real use.
The runway closed with “Singing in the Rain” on the soundtrack as the heavens continued to dump outside. Vinter and co., for the most part, can croon happily.
