Robert Mapplethorpe / Ludovic de Saint Sernin

Fall 2024

De Saint Sernin’s debut in New York was bigger than anything he has done at home in Paris, where he’s shown (mostly on the men’s calendar, but sometimes on the women’s) since 2017; he’s a poster boy for a new kind of queer fashion that puts people of all genders in spangly tanks and briefs, hip-slung jeans with eyelet-laced flies, and sexy, body-bearing club wear.

What brought him to New York was a collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. De Saint Sernin read Patti Smith’s National Book Award-winning memoir of her relationship with the groundbreaking photographer, Just Kids, in his twenties, and credits the book with not just his self-discovery but also the genesis of his brand. “I relate to him on both a personal and artistic level, so this is kind of a pinnacle,” he said backstage.

It was important to de Saint Sernin to address the breadth of Mapplethorpe’s range, from the flower photography to his controversy-stirring chronicling of the gay BDSM scene. In the process he could flex his own, opening with sheer organdy tees fused with hand-cut velvet flowers and jeans and moving into crystal versions of the flowers on a chainmail dress and a couple of skimpy one-shoulder and halterneck tops. “We start the show with something very innocent, very pure, and focused on Mapplethorpe’s work,” he said.