Celebrating the post-confinement reestablished right to roam, this Pigalle look book and video were supposed to be ready for menswear week. However that plan was scuppered by a different reason to stay inside: rain. At least it turned out lovely in the end.
As Stéphane Ashpool laid it down during a call last month: “I’ve been waiting to be able to be free to ride around and to listen to music for a long time, so I was kind of preparing myself as you would prepare to climb a mountain.” Those pre-expedition preparations included working with VanMoof on special builds of 15 of the firm’s awesome e-bikes, decking them out with disc wheels that matched the frames’ rainbow paint jobs and fitting them with speakers linked by Bluetooth to the output of a portable mixing unit. VanMoofs typically enjoy a 150-kilometer powered range between charges: From the pictures and film, it looked like Ashpool and his crew tested that limit by roaming from the Opera Garnier to the bucolic countryside somewhere way beyond the Périphérique.
Pigalle has long specialized in soft, seductive, sensual color palettes: shimmers of pastel that you might otherwise glimpse within a freshly shucked oyster shell or on fresh pistachio. Here Ashpool maintained his palette—once rare but now much more adopted across menswear—but added patina and depth, working with more than 100 differently cured and dyed leathers to create layers of texture in the sportswear. There was also a fresh reiteration of his ongoing exploration of basketball uniforms, referring back to the public courts that have been the socially uplifting community-spirited heart of his project since way before such brand extensions emerged as hot marketing propositions. Ashpool remains a dreamer, and this collection—and oh, yes, those bikes—looked dreamy too.
