At Doublet, clothes are not made, they are interrogated at length, and sometimes they answer, but beside the point. The AIR collection, for example, does not merely take the pulse of the times. It asks for their papers, treats them with suspicion, takes them into custody, and finally prints them. Air? Yes, CO₂, that discreet gas with no loyalty card, yet always present when it was not invited, in order to ape Owens.

To pull off this sleight of hand pollution, Doublet smokes us out. Literally and symbolically. Which is only fitting, since symbolically we have been smoked out for a long time already. The inks now come from exhaust pipes. Practical. It saves the trouble of looking elsewhere for inspiration. Diesel black, ring-road grey, Friday night traffic-jam anthracite. A subtle palette, post-industrial, post-breathable. My neighbor, Hermès scarf firmly pulled over her nose, watches the CO₂ settle in. “I’m staying,” it says. “The atmosphere is good.” She is an atheist, but above all lacking in good “faith,” which is far worse.

At Doublet, no one is playing. Or rather, they play very seriously at not knowing what they are doing. Fabrics shrink under heat, textures sulk, surfaces undergo an identity crisis. Even the designers doubt. They look at their prototypes the way one looks at a yogurt three weeks past its expiration date, with a certain scientific curiosity. One wonders whether science can still do anything, or whether it has moved away.

And that is where Doublet is happy, because failure becomes an argument, instability a position, and the famous “we’ll see” an editorial line.

AIR celebrates the almost, the unfinished, because each silhouette tells the story of a battle lost, but replayed with conviction. Each garment seems to say:
“I’m ready… well… let’s say I’m training.”
The future here is neither clear nor crisp nor ironed. It is wrinkled, hesitant, lopsided, yet endowed with a stubborn confidence, the kind born in people who doubt everything except their total lack of legitimacy. At Doublet, the future is not ready-to-wear. It is in the process of being captured, and as everyone knows, cemeteries are always lit by nothingness.

FM