CAROLIN LERCH

Belgian-native Caroline Lerch is transforming the way we view fashion.

As the designer behind Pelican Avenue, Lerch also works with her boyfriend, Michiel Helbig, to develop video installations taking place throughout fashion week. Lerch graduated from the Antwerp Academy of Fashion and went on to assist designer Bernard Willhelm. In 2004, the designer left to create her own label, Pelican Avenue, which is now presented each year at Paris Fashion Week.

The label’s most recent collection, Hanging Garden, incorporates video and live performance into it’s Parisian presentation. A sequence of scenes taking place throughout the world, Hanging Garden represents the designer’s idea of blurred bounderies for art and fashion. The idea of a garden party integrates playfulness and free-spirit ideology into the mix, and Lerch’s accompanying tactile garments were equally dreamy and care free. Swaths of fabric draped loosely over bodies, some in a gradation of pale beiges and whites, others in deep plums and black. A menswear playsuit jumps from grey to a purple midsection and back to gray again, while a womenswear dress flows between hunter green and cream, under a long, loosely fitted green jacket. Dolman sleeves showed up on some looks—once on a monochromatic cream mini-dress with a low neckline; another as a loose black top paired with deep green slouchy pants. The backdrop, of course, is a gradiated sheet of fabric in deep purple, cream and gray.

Pelican Avenue is available at Park in Vienna, Noi in Rotterdam and online at pelicanavenue.com

- Emily Freisher

Photography by Jef Jacobs