A-Cold-Wall presented its first collection since founder Samuel Ross quietly exited the brand he founded in 2014 as a “material study for social architecture.”
Many of his key collaborators remained, and they threw a lot of info at you at the brand’s presentation in Milan, explaining the brooding characters glaring at you from video monitors that encircled the darkened space, sub-bass growling from somewhere out back.
The personalities included gold-toothed drum-and-bass deity Goldie, who doffed his jeans during the look book shoot, whipped out a can of spray paint, and tagged one leg with the name of the record label he co-founded in 1994: Metalheadz.
That anecdote, recounted by A-Cold-Wall’s art and design director William Slocombe, illustrated how the brand is strengthening its ties to cutting-edge British music and film culture and reaching out to older generations, while continuing to ply its industrial-tinged, protective outerwear — and experiment with offbeat, distressed-looking fabrics.
Many resembled concrete; others terrazzo, or trash bags, transmitting the don’t-mess-with-me attitude of “grim” music, a new genre pioneered by the likes of the Sleaford Mods, whose frontman Jason Williamson also features in the look book.
In contrast, anoraks, shirts and pants in taxi-cab yellow, riddled with perhaps too many cords and drawstrings, would certainly stand out in the long queues at Drumsheds or Electrowerkz.
Somewhat to its detriment, the presentation put the focus on more extreme designs, including its signature “form gilet” — a take on bulletproof vests — in extra puffy iterations, some in stiff, chalky fabrics that resembled gypsum.
Meanwhile, Goldie’s one-of-a-kind jeans will probably end up framed behind glass for posterity, or auctioned off for charity, Slocombe hinted. TBC.