№.8 Site of Departure, Part One
Behind the scenes of AFFALÉ's debut collection.
In case you missed last week’s announcement, AFFALÉ launched its first collection!
Though of course the product was the focus of the launch, our debut also featured the maiden voyage of affale.fr, a lovely little piece of work itself. Cobbling the whole thing together as a one-woman operation was quite the ride! Over the next two editions of this newsletter, we’ll delve into the behind-the-scenes process of bringing it to life:
In this post, we’ll cover everything product: the backstory behind the styles I selected for this collection, as well as a bit of AFFALÉ myth-making, and a look at a less-well-known genre I plan on reviving,
In the second post, we’ll cover product photography process,
And in the final post in the series, we’ll cover the site design itself: the architecting, the graphic design, and a few of the more interesting sections that make affale.fr a bit different than your average direct-to-consumer fashion line.
I. The Best-Laid Plans…
I wish I could say I had been faithful to the original vision for AFFALÉ’s debut collection. I had designed a series of spectacular, reversible evening gowns, in a wonderful assortment of colors, to be paired with matching scarves, and delivered with a corresponding “archival” letter, straight out of the AFFALÉ Extended Universe©.
Their “A-sides” would sport the maximalist Midjourney-V-3 prints AFFALÉ is known and loved for…
…meanwhile, the “B-sides” would feature wild, bespoke designs, echoes of the “A-side” print, but much more attention-grabbing, with many explicitly reflecting aspects of AFFALÉ’s lore. Sure, they might be a little much for some customers—but they’re completely optional, totally extra! Come for the commonplace, stay for the costume (or don’t!). You can remain Clark Kent til your heart’s content. You’ll know you’re still super on the inside 😉.
And for the wild ones, those willing to brave the “B-sides”—though they may ooze with day-to-night practicality, you might imagine the shenanigans to be had. Excusing yourself half-way through a dinner party to wash up, only to make your re-entrance dazzlingly metamorphosed.1 And should you find yourself on the lamb, running from the law? Flip The Dress™️, throw on a Groucho Marx ‘stache, and presto, fugitivus evanesco!
Unfortunately, as with any hardware industry, supply chain snafus will have their way with even your most sincere flights of fancy—my precious gowns wouldn’t be ready until end-of-summer, at least.
Well… what now? I still wanted to launch, as I felt AFFALÉ had gestated long enough, and was fast approaching that critical point of having something to say.
I considered my options: I already had the matching scarves; I could sell the “A” pattern swatches à la carte, as l'objets d'art, much like how a photographer would sell prints; and perhaps I could spruce up the world-building around the archival letters and expand them into a product category in their own right?
And. And.
II. Love The One You’re With
Duffel bags. You may recall a previous edition of this newsletter featured a deep-dive into the design of a one-off branded duffel I created late last year:
I continued to tinker with the format for months after, filling out an entire rainbow of colors, and adding additional text from the Manifesto of Surrealism to the bag’s exterior, a sentence or so along each of the straps.
By this point, I’m sure folks at home think I have a thing for duffel bags, but in reality, it’s a practical, mercenary love—they’re comparatively easy for my supplier to make on-demand, and, with their lovely silk interiors, they punch far above their weight in terms of COGS.
But, they are rather fun canvases for my prints, too…
I gave in. I christened The Apollinaire Duffel as my debut collection’s flagship product, and ordered a whole raft of them to shoot my content with. A pillowy-soft launch it was! I quickly penned some title-subheading-body copy for each of my four product offerings.
For the duffel…
The Apollinaire Duffel
“In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire, we baptize this new mode of pure expression…”
Roman by birth, Polish by name, Parisian by choice, Guillaume Apollinaire both coined the term “surrealism,” and fomented the unruly band of luminaries around whom that aesthetic movement would soon coalesce. Posthumously canonized by André Breton in his Manifeste du surréalisme, Apollinaire received a much more intimate tribute from his muse and artist in her own right, Mme. AFFALÉ.
AFFALÉ is in large part a tribute to the rich history of Surrealism, especially the madcap energy of its early pioneers.2 It was fitting, then, to name AFFALÉ’s first product after Guillaume Apollinaire, who’s essentially the godfather of Surrealism.
And for the scarves…
Silk Scarf №.30
“Adore, Adorn.”
So wonderful. So light. So difficult. So free. A silk scarf is a symbolless symbol, a motif to be stretched, revisited and reworked. It is not a format to which one attaches designs, or an accessory which one affixes to one’s self, but a mirror that reflects the intention of the eye that beholds it. It is because of these properties this the form retains the ability to sublimate now into nostalgia and now and back again.
As I’ve covered previously on this blog, I’m utterly fascinated by Yves Saint Laurent’s commitment to fully exploring of a small number of symbols and motifs, over and over again throughout his career. I consider the scarf to be one of my own motifs in this regard. When you’re designing a scarf, there’s simultaneously everywhere and nowhere to hide, and I feel like I’ve explored less than one-percent of what one can generate with this superimposition.
And, for the pattern swatches…
Pattern Swatch
“Symbols, repeated and reworked, until they form a veritable personal mythology…”
An important figure in the Parisian avant-garde, Mme. AFFALÉ developed her unique approach to abstraction through her work in paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints, often on her signature "A" stationery. Upon her death in 1956, a number of these artworks were salvaged, and have been made available for sale to the public.
That’s nice, but… huh? Who is this “Mme. AFFALÉ” I keep referring to?
III. The World According To Mme. AFFALÉ
“Mme. AFFALÉ” is a kind of avatar who has gradually evolved out of my initial branding explorations.
Above all, she’s a manifestation of myself; but she’s also an amalgam of several historical figures—Madames Grés and Schiaparelli, from fashion proper; as well a few aesthetically-inclined French heiresses, both those eminently sane, and those perhaps less so. More than any other figure, though, she draws upon the life and career of Marie Laurencin.
Laurencin was a member of early-twentieth-century-Paris’s avant-garde, carving her own path as one of the era’s few female Cubist painters. “Queer femme with a Gallic twist" was how she described both herself and her work. To this day, her namesake museum remains the only collection in the world dedicated solely to the art of a female painter.
And…
She was a talented printmaker. Hence the pattern swatches, drawn from “Mme. AFFALÉ’s” vast archive.
And…
She was Guillaume Apollinaire’s lover and muse.
Which brings us to perhaps the least-understood, yet most-magical product in AFFALÉ’s debut collection, the calligrammes…
Calligrammes
“𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒶𝓃 𝓊𝓃𝒶𝓋𝑜𝓌𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝓅𝒶𝓈𝓈𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝒾𝓃𝒻𝓁𝒶𝓂𝑒𝒹 𝓇𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓈.”
Not unlike the multi-perspectival effect of Cubist paintings, a calligramme meshes image and text together into a self-reflexive object. Finding delight in the simultaneity of the medium, M. Apollinaire and Mme. AFFALÉ adopted the calligramme as their primary means of correspondence. A handful were salvaged upon Mme. AFFALÉ’s death in 1956, and have been made available for sale to the public.
A calligramme is a hybrid of a poem and a sketch that work together to depict a common subject, allowing the viewer to lap up meaning from the common area of direct experience that the poem renders. Described charitably as “fanciful experiments” by some contemporaries (and by others, “toyish” and “gimmicky”), calligrammes comprise the bulk of Guillaume Apollinaire’s oeuvre.
If you remember my stack of brand inspo-books from earlier, the second book from the top was a compilation of these poems.
…and, notice the book above it?
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses. Forget F. Scott Fitzgerald’s letters to Zelda, forget Kafka’s Letters to Felice—the complexity of Marquise de Merteuil’s and Vicomte de Valmont’s entwinement makes all other epistolatory romances seem like See Spot Run by comparison.
I decided to merge the calligramme form with a playfully self-conscious channeling of Liaisons, and tell the story of the brand that way, through Mme. AFFALÉ and M. Apollinaire’s correspondence. Here’s the rest of the blurb I wrote for the calligrammes, though I later cut it for the sake of brevity:
“…Initially finding the contrast of their self-consciously Les Liaisons dangereuses style of conversation with the lightness of the medium charming, she grew to discover that the simultaneity of the medium best suited their shared compulsion to express the verbal and physical complexities of their lives and their era, and to express the actual functioning of thought.
“His poetry, her painting, the pair's expressions merge like rivers into a single stream of visual lyricism, and the calligrammes comprise the oeuvre of a single painter-poet that is both of them and neither of them…”
In future AFFALÉ collections, the big-ticket items, such as the gowns I mentioned earlier, will come with calligrammes, the content of which will tie in with the themes of their collections and evolve the AFFALÉ storyline.
So offering them à la carte as part of the debut collection seemed only natural. The first calligramme, titled Masquarade and shaped accordingly, was composed by Mme. AFFALÉ in Paris, and sent to M. Apollinaire on August 2nd, 1917.
Calligrammes, Pattern Swatches, Silk Scarves, and the Apollinaire Duffel. Besides these four product categories, I dreamed up a few “extras” to feature on affale.fr that go well beyond the offerings of your average direct-to-consumer fashion brand, which we’ll cover in the third and final post in this series.
But next up—on to photography!
plus chic, tu meurs,
—jane
AFFALÉ is now accepting new clients for its new couture concept, Atelier!
Imagine unboxing an entire capsule collection informed by your unique essence, that only you own, your own idiosyncratic wardrobe within which to envelop yourself as you make your way through the world.
With the additional options for the full tailoring experience, custom pieces jewelry designed in conversation with the artwork and silhouettes of the garments, and a mirrored digital experience for each garment made, AFFALÉ's Atelier is the most beautiful, most advanced fashion experience available.
Click here to apply now, or learn more about what all the concept entails here.
Have a friend who might be a good fit for the concept? Share Atelier with them!
It’s not for nothing that the name of the gown is L'Invention du Papillon—“The Invention of the Butterfly.”
Yes, yes, I hear some variety of “surrealism” is back in vogue these days, duking it out with Quiet Luxury for the title of 👑 Definitive early-2020s Aesthetic 🏆.
But when there’s a skincare brand literally named “Surreal Skincare,” it just feels right to create a brand that honors that tradition in a way that’s not so, well, skin-deep—that incorporates actual historical Surrealism into the fabric of the brand in non-trivial ways.