Baltic Awards Riga Fashion Week S/S 2013

This year’s Baltic Fashion Award had four recipients: Skörl, Kaseee, C-neeon, and Andrej Subarew. Their collections are as intriguing as their names, full of Northern promise and sensibility—we can always count on our boreal neighbors to hyper-stylize bulky winter apparel.

Opening the show at Riga Fashion Week was the work of young German designer Annalena Skörl Maul, from her hip-hop collection “Swagga.” Her weapon of choice is crochet, which may seem out of place in a hip-hop collection, but it actually harmonizes the baggy, casual look adding a bit of texture. Maul, noted for her sense of humor, crochets headphones, eyeglass frames, giant necklaces, and a skateboard harness. Youthful and sporty, the collection epitomizes comfort’s place in fashion.

Kaseee, a six-year-old enterprise from Apolda, Germany, is not as lax. Oblique lines feature prominently in these fitted garments with Samurai undertones. Blacks, browns, and grays are only ever challenged by a deep red or snow white. Founder Katrin Sergejew has won numerous European awards for her men and women’s collections, including a 2007 Baltic Fashion Award for the category of Avant-garde Woman.

Baroque and busy, C-neeon’s collection integrates knitwear into its diverse pool of textiles per outfit. Volume is apparent in the sleeves that end in pompom-like shreds, dense hoods, and layers of Mondrian patterns. Chaotic geometry is what Berlin duo Clara Leskovar and Doreen Shultz strive for in their bold designs. C-neeon has showrooms in Berlin, Paris, New York and Tokyo, and has had a run at London Fashion Week.

Militaristic punk is one way to describe the last collection of the show, the work of Baltic Fashion Award Art Director Andrej Subarew. Rigid forms are supplemented with leather and metal accessories—sometimes curiously gory ones, like a blood spatter cross-strap or scorpion pendants that hang at the end of elongated chains. The surprise of plaid reads like an allusion to Alexander McQueen’s infamous Highland Rape. Like McQueen, Subarew is fastidious about pattern cutting and proportion.