PARIS — Those hankering for a second serving of Christophe Decarnin’s rock ’n’ roll denim should mark their calendars.
The French designer has teamed with Bond, a San Francisco-based platform launched in 2019 that touts enabling luxury professionals to source products across a trusted network without sharing client information, for a denim capsule that was unveiled Tuesday.
Decarnin, a graduate of Paris’ ESMOD fashion school who cut his teeth at Paco Rabanne, is best known for heating up Balmain to a fever pitch during his five-year tenure at the creative helm.
Between 2006 and 2011, he churned out audacious, sexy and pricy fashions for the French fashion house. His remit grew to include menswear, where ripped jeans and tough leather blousons became a by-word of the so-called “Balmainia” era.
After that, he went under the radar, reportedly leading the elusive design team of French Connexion circa 2016.
Christophe Decarnin has teamed up with collaborative commerce platform Bond for a capsule of denim pieces.
Courtesy of Bond
Bond chief executive officer and cofounder Peter Griffith told WWD he views Decarnin as “a genius” for “his cuts, his details, his attention to detail” and was “a client from Day One of [Decarnin’s] men’s collection at Balmain and a collector of all his pieces.”
Griffith met Decarnin through Jungmi Park, who currently serves as director of creative projects and brand collaborations at Bond and had logged almost a decade at Balmain under Decarnin and his successor Olivier Rousteing.
“What I expected to be a perfunctory conversation expanded into a deeper [one],” the Bond founder continued. “I explained Bond’s business as a platform for luxury sales associates collaborating with one another. He explained that he was interested in new models in fashion, which felt archaic.”
The French designer deemed the project his “comeback as a designer,” adding that he loved the idea of a collaboration given the platform’s “very new and different model,” which intrigued him.
After their initial meeting, an idea around Japanese denim that Decarnin was already kicking about took shape. “Peter and I were both on the same page about the collaboration and what it means to be luxury,” he told WWD.
Key to the project were notions around being limited in numbers, of the best quality, tapping into the “expertise of real denim culture from Japan” and “exclusive but not out of reach for everyone [or] snobby,” he added.
Made from premium Japanese denim, an inaugural two styles have been imagined by Decarnin, one for men and the other for women. Both feature fabric straps climbing up the calf and zips along the leg, with the version for women running above the thigh.
Available for preorder from Tuesday in black or white through Bond, they will be limited to 888 pieces globally and priced in the “luxury retail denim,” above 700 euros.
