Just in time for New Years! Bataille’s dazzling premiere collection not only offers the perfect festive attire, but everyday pieces you will want to wear all 2019 and onwards. With sequin gowns juxtaposed with casual accessories, Alexander Lamm and Julian Jāggi’s new label teases a forthcoming legacy of timeless classics and effortless luxury in a new age of rebellious resolutions.
Inspired by the French philosopher Georges Bataille, the young brand seeks to fuse heritage with the gender neutrality of today’s non-binary world. The luxury economic theories of Georges Bataille meets the alluring romance of contemporary fashion in Villa Tobler, Zurich where the young creatives behind the label have chosen to showcase their new designs. In this Art Nouveau mansion, fashion becomes resistance as the decadent interiors and lush gardens are cut by the sharp designs of long-brimmed caps and leather bum bags.
The two designers explain that woven into the fabric of the brand’s ethos is its ‘belief in the socio-emancipatory and life-enhancing power of fashion. Consisting of sequin cocktail dresses, linen T-shirt dresses, bodybuilder-style pullovers and club-inspired accessories, the new collection seems to focus on the liberation of gender binaries to facilitate such changes. By not splitting their garments into categories of male and female, Bataille breaks with the conventional moulds of fashion by creating unisex pieces that appeal equally to gender fluid and cisgender clients.
The Artemisia bum bag, available in four different variations, demonstrates part of this flexibility, versatility and gender-free appeal. Easily styled in combination with floor-length gowns or everyday garments, this practical Berlin club-scene necessity (according to Alexander Lamm) adapted to become an alternative, luxurious classic.
But what makes Bataille unique from other unisex brands is that their fashion in its imagery manages to echo the tempting archetypes of the femme fatale, and Decadence in new contexts. As a result the label works with tradition with moments of rebellion, to rescind fashion’s gender contraints of the past for a contemporary audience.
This sense of empowerment is also carried onto the production of each pieces, regenerating the fashion industry for a worthwhile cause. As the brand’s philosophy primarily rest on a heavy bed European heritage, it only seem fit that the garments are also made in Europe. Doing so also ensures the highest quality possible awhile also enhance the lives of their workers as well as their consumers. By prioritizing slow fashion and natural materials, Bataille adds to the growing list of young brands making the conscious effort to change conventions within the garment industry in order to uphold luxury standards. The Artemisia bum bag, for example, is made in partnership with a small family-run atelier in Italy that values the integrity of long-lasting and sustainable production.
Through their new collection and their means of production, Bataille shows us that fashion is a combination of rebellion and adaption, equally working with the past and rebelling against it. Each year, as more brands establish themselves on such social and environmental principles, freedom is given to the garments (and the people they clothe) that allows them to exist in a world seeking to evolve and to break free from the overproduction and exploitation of the fashion industry.
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