At Ottolinger, irreverence has long been part of the formula. For their 10th anniversary, cofounders Christa Bosch and Cosima Gadient revisited that spirit for a collection titled “Female Fool,” borrowing the phrase from artist Isa Genzken’s 2014 exhibit “The Only Female Fool.”
The premise centers on the presence of women unafraid to take up space, make questionable decisions and keep moving anyway.
The collection balanced Ottolinger’s signature chaos with a slightly more grown-up sensibility. “We’re not 20 anymore,” Gadient said. “But we always have to be playful.”
Outerwear led on that front with fuzzy faux-fur chubbies and puffer jackets constructed from sleeping bags. Skinny leather pants and early-2000s velour tracksuits tugged at the nostalgia heartstrings, while oversize pussy bows on men’s jackets and striped shirts represented the brand’s gender-fluid approach.
They did play a greatest hit or two, with the shredded dress look from a past collection on repeat, and a few almost Victorian-inspired shapes in pied-de-poule check and puff sleeves.
The show’s setting — a black-painted room of the former French Army headquarters, with an open window overlooking the sunset across Parisian rooftops as the models’ backdrop, combined with “Berlin-style seating” on cinder blocks — reinforced the collection’s urban-meets-industrial mood. Unfortunately, the view was often more limited than comfortable.
Business remains steady across multiple markets, the cofounders said, with Europe still at its core but sales growing globally. “If one is dropping, the other is going up,” Bosch said. “Every market has its own challenges at the moment.”
Along with the designers, the customer is growing up, too. The brand worked with leather for the first time in this collection. As they improve the quality of their materials, corresponding price point increases will “speak to a different audience,” Gadient said.
That clarity about where the indie label is headed suggests the “female fools” know what they are doing.
