What is bad taste? Neith Nyer’s Autumn/Winter 18/19 collection is an attempt to answer to this question. By blurring the lines between vulgarity and elegance, this season seeks to give a higher status to what is commonly considered distasteful.
The Bad Taste Ball season is named after the parties that the designer’s parents were attending in Brazil near the end of the 80s. "It was nothing like Carnival," remembers designer Francisco Terra, "People were not wearing costumes; It was all about fashion, and pushing the limits of the acceptable. Who would have the most ruffles on their dress? Who’d dare to sport the most garish clash of colours?
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As they were out for the night, Francisco recalls watching movies like The Never Ending Story or The Little Mermaid. The dreamy aesthetic of the images was somehow linked for him to the party his parents were going to - A place of mystery and excess.
The key silhouette of the collection was built by taking in the seams of the clothes and topstitching them to refit the garment, a homemade-looking technique magnified by the use of silk and heavy velvet.
The boots, designed with shoemaker Zeferino using the same process, seem like they have been captured in fabric,
and the cone shaped bras, slit in the middle for a glimpse of the nipple, give a bold and playful aspect to the silhouettes.
The long dresses in liquid velvet and silk embrace the shapes of the body and reveal more than they hide.
The pink colour, part of the brand’s DNA, is mingled with the traditional carnations of autumn: Orange, black and purple.
This same palette is also used by the artist Matthias Garcia who created a series of exclusive paintings for the collection. The prints depict a bestiary inspired by fantasy movies
while the jewellery, designed and created by Florence Tetier, portrays a menagerie of eccentric little sea creatures.
Metallic sunflower buckles adorn broad shoulderd corduroy jackets
Precious and futuristic looking, yet made out of very ordinary fabrics, it is both luxury and trash.
The sentences printed on the shirts stand as the manifesto of the collection. They are built apropos to the chaotic English grammar that can be seen on some tacky, cheap shirts and sweaters. Those sentences, seen by many as the essence of bad taste, also carry beauty and poetry.
Photography by Marcio Madeira
