CG by Chris Gelinas: Retrofuturism and clear silhouettes
IN THE WEEKLY RUBRIC "NEW MARK" Wonderzine presents young designers and tells where and how you can buy their things. Our hero this week is Parsons graduate Chris Gelinas, who decided to work for himself after working with Proenza Schouler, Balenciaga and Theyskens' Theory.
Chris Gelinas was born in Canada, in the small town of Tecumseh, but spent most of his life abroad: in Mexico, North Korea and the Philippines. Behind a 29-year-old Canadian, he studied at the Parsons School of Design and has experience in Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler and Balenciaga. But the designer decided to launch his own name line of clothes only after having worked as the chief assistant for Olivier Teyskens in Theyskens' Theory - his debut spring-summer collection is now just in time and place. It was followed by autumn-winter 2014, in which the designer went deep into retro-futurism. According to Chris, he used more expensive fabrics and materials for things of the next season, which allowed him to convey a feeling of cleanliness and weightlessness of clothes. One cannot but agree with this: you can find in the collection both a white airy dress of neoprene with a geometric cut, and voluminous sweatshirts with retroprints applied by a laser, and just well-tailored clothes made of high-tech fabrics. It is worth noting that Chris Helinas is really great at working out the details. Perhaps this was influenced by the fact that his grandmother was engaged in his upbringing, who worked as a seamstress all her life.
CG by Chris Gelinas is a young brand that has not yet become familiar to the pages of magazines. The brand managed to arouse the interest of the fashion community quite recently - it reached the final of the LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize contest. A jury of 40 fashion industry professionals, including Karl Lagerfeld, Ricardo Tisci, Nicolas Gesquière, Marc Jacobs and Raf Simons, selected 12 finalists. In May of this year, Chris Gelinas will have to compete for a grant of 300,000 euros with the rest of the contest finalists, among whom are already familiar to us Simone Rocha and Jacquemus, and our compatriot Vika Gazinskaya.
In the fashion industry, there is one feature that is constantly generating controversy - the speed with which everything changes around. You may like it or not, but this is a fact that you should put up with. The market is constantly evolving and it often happens that it is difficult to adjust to it. All this creates a frantic rhythm, which often scares people away, and they leave the industry. At this stage of my career, it is very important for me to receive a LVMH grant - this will be a strong impetus to the development of my business. In addition, now my team and I are looking for the ideal retailer for our brand who could correctly bring us to the market for goods in this segment.
Where to find things CG
To date, CG does not disclose the list of retailers, since representatives of the brand are only at the negotiation stage with 4 distributors. But it is possible to order clothes through the brand’s PR manager by sending a request to [email protected].