Clementine Smith: Unwearable Fashion, Unlivable Lives

Clementine Smith may be young, in fact extremely young, but her work oozes a surprising maturity, an almost metaphysical wisdom that seems to surface through our collective subconscious. The Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) Bachelor of Arts graduate presented a final collection ironically called Pretty Colors, with very few to no actual colors in sight. She instead experimented with sartorially bold yet light shapes and a mostly black and white color palette, thus allowing the viewer’s eye to further focus on the bold, masculine-like silhouettes.

Clementine Smith takes inspiration from the Hollywood man of the 1950s and twists it into something entirely her own, a commentary on not only modern masculinity but also on practicality versus artistry in contemporary life. Born to a French mother and American father, the rising talent spent her Los Angeles childhood exposed, and almost mesmerized, by the silver screen’s golden age. From Singin’ in the Rain to Funny Face, those cinematic moments of iconic, almost toxic by today’s standards, masculinity became an integral part of her creative DNA.

But Smith is not interested in nostalgia; in fact, she has a lot to say against it. She is more likely engineering a quiet revolution, one sharply cut jacket at a time. “All my inspiration comes from period Hollywood films; the menswear in them is incredible. But I also wanted to bring a feminine touch, so that toughness and vulnerability could coexist in the pieces,” explains the designer in a quote for Harper’s Bazaar France.

In Smith’s hands, menswear becomes a language of tenderness, one where power dressing meets emotional intelligence and the suit becomes armor for the heart, not just the body. Her philosophy is deeply rooted in today’s uncertain post-capitalist zeitgeist and the ones who rule it. “It was important to me, because the world today is clearly run by men in suits.” Still, rather than fueling hostility towards the man of the day, she chooses to look for beauty in it. “My man, the one I imagine, is a man of love, not domination or hatred,” she notes.

At the same time, Smith’s more experimental pieces, blazers with sleeves that cascade to the floor and trousers constructed from crystalline fragments that shatter with movement, push beyond wearability into pure conceptual territory. Take her social media-popular White Backless Suit design, a personal version of the male suit with an open back, equally unwearable but sensual in its fragility.

Smith designs, patterns, and drapes with one thing in mind: the eternal quest for beauty in a world that is becoming cynical. Her designs, albeit unwearable, or perhaps because of that, mirror our contemporary predicament: we inhabit a world increasingly designed for performance rather than living. Much like her immobilizing crystal pants or gravity-defying architectural coats, modern life demands we prioritize spectacle over substance, appearance over comfort.

In her work, all sartorial impossibilities become metaphors for an existence where everything, from social media personas to work environments, privileges the visual over the visceral, the ephemeral over the eternal. Is this fashion’s deathbed confession, asks Smith? Does a world where authenticity has become performance art make us choose our clothes between being functional and being seen? Are we simply subconscious participants in what Debord aptly called The Society of the Spectacle, or do we dare cultivate our inner sensibility? For Smith, there is certainly hope rooted in tenderness.