Looking for Something Brief and Abbreviated yet Decorative This Summer? Look No Further Than Lou de Betoly
“I like funny,” said Lou de Betoly, laughing, “but sometimes I think I like funny too much.” A Berlin transplant from Paris of several years standing, De Betoly came to this German city after a stint on the Gaultier Paris haute couture team, and she certainly does like funny, of the mordantly witty variety. With her eponymous label she has brilliantly cast a wryly knowing look at what is currently presented as femininity in the culture: the good, and the not so good. (You can take a guess at what pop cultural juggernauts I am talking about in both regards.)
Currently De Betoly chooses to do a runway show once a year, and her collection this past January played to her strengths quite considerably. These include the simultaneous celebration and subversion of lingerie (an ever-present theme in Berlin, it has to be said); the delicacy and punkishness of light, airy cobwebby sweater dressing; and a fiercely committed stance on working with whatever she has to hand.
To that last point, she took the swishy, kitschy curtains she used for a presentation at her store last summer, colored a shade of fetish-y, saccharin-sweet pink that David Lynch would have loved, and cut it up into looks for her January runway show. (She must have had plenty of it left over, because she also worked it into a strict yet elegant tailleur only a matter of days ago; you can watch her doing so on her Instagram account, @loudebetoly. It’s well worth a look.)
