Marke’s Mario Kleine might be in the thrall of the past, yet there’s something about his menswear that is absolutely rooted in the present. The softer, gentler, more fragile notion of tailoring that was the story of the recent run of European men’s shows? The Koln-based Kleine has been doing that for seasons now, infusing it with poeticism and lyricism along the way. His latest he dubbed ‘Remnants and Relics,’ and very good it was too; a time-traveling 400-year odyssey with an Orlando-type character who gathers up a wardrobe of ivory high-buttoned, foppish suiting with a Death in Venice vibe to it: culotte shorts embellished with stripes of tiny buttons, and based on centuries-old German breeches called rhingraven, and high-rise officer’s pants with a flourish of a decorative cummerbund at the waist.
“The collection is based on the Virginia Woolf character,” Kleine said after his show, “but it’s also a development of last season’s, which was based on the Enlightenment [the 18th century movement where fearful superstition gave way to rational, empirical knowledge]. Today we’re also looking for knowledge, even though we’re meant to have it all because it’s on our phones.” That’s Kleine’s smart trick here: to stop his view of history from simply being historicist. It’s evident in the clothes, for sure, making things relevant for today’s world, and how someone might want to wear them in 2027. So, a formal white tie jacket is partnered with voluminous gray track pants, while a tailcoat is turned into a charcoal tee, layered over a crisp white shirt and gray shorts. His shoes, substantial black lace-ups with squared off toes, done in collaboration with Dr. Martens, kept everything looking grounded too.
At Marke, Kleine has been leaning into a more fluid idea of gender with his clothing, echoing the way that historical male dress could be decorative, dandy-ish, even quote-unquote feminine. In fact, everything for him starts with his tailoring. “It’s because I start designing a collection with what I want to wear,” Kleine said, laughing. “The tailoring becomes the baseline, and then I’ll add things on top, like sweatpants, to bring it down, in a way.” In a serendipitous act, he got to show his collection at Berlin’s ICC Internationales Congress Centrum, a fabulous, hulking 1970s Brutalist building that has lain empty for some years, after being a conference center, then a safe haven for refugees to shelter, with rumors its next incarnation will be a culture epicenter. “This place has also been a time traveler,” Kleine said. “Seeing it lit up today for the show and being used again…it’s like it came back to life.”
