Les Benjamins FW23 with an all-GCC creative team
This season LES BENJAMINS launches FW23, the 'FIRST WAVE' collection inspired as a visual blueprint of what the first colony from Earth might look like imagined desert landscape.
Bringing together some of the most aesthetic pillars of the brand, think futuristic sci-fi elements and gaming skins with traditional Eastern cultural symbols such as the LES BENJAMINS carpet monogram, the ‘First Wave’ is the visualisation of a future where nostalgia for earth still lingers on, long after its inhabitants have left.
The Istanbul-based brand has gone from strength to strength in the region as the brands’ creative director Bunyamin Aydin understands the aesthetic touchpoint that resonates with the GCC youth movement.
Opening several stores successfully with a unique edge in fit out and experience, Aydin's ability to take risks and speak directly to his audience through his design narratives is his secret superpower.
Technical garments are crafted with protective elements in mind, think second-skin like body armour, padding and technical military silhouettes in leather, silk and crepe.
This padded softness or 'protection' is juxtaposed with hardware and functional details each adorned with patches, tubes and drawstring elements in oversized, slouchy raver-esque oversized silhouettes.
The palette of deep mahogany, swamp and sylvan green are parked by flashes of abstract neons and acid-washes in over-exposed Pantones set a futuristic, cyberpunk vibe across the men's and women's collections enhance the hopeful, human accent against a dysotopia backdrop.
This collection celebrates hope, truth and resilience and is a social comment on the underlying context of 2023 ... beauty in the struggle and the human condition.