CGD

Before you can move on, you must reflect on everything you’ve created, look at it through new eyes. Last year was a turning point for the LAFORMELA brand. And not only because of the MAINLINE 24 and MAINLINE 24/25 collections, but also because of company restructuring, of transforming its creative process and its outlook for the future.

Winds of change could be felt even in the summer collection, which contained over twenty looks assembled from a variable number of tops, thematizing the fighting spirit and the desire to move forward. The summer collection, with its epauletted silhouettes and transparent materials, showed a taste for something new, something bigger. Miroslava Kohutiarová and Antonín Soukup joined forces with Stink Films Prague, director Jaroslav Moravec and Francesca Kolowrat to present MAINLINE 24 in a new way. Instead of a classic fashion show, LAFORMELA decided to take an audiovisual approach, much like during the pandemic when all the fashion houses were presenting their collections through grand films due to restrictions.

But why now? Film is a format in which you can oversee the slightest details, take control of every aspect and content distribution. You define what you want to say and how you want to say it, while always finding a certain “aha moment” in the overall process. As a garment creator, you find yourself in an unexpectedly intimate connection with your work. Watching the endless shots on the screen in the film studio or in post-production, you see all the nuances of movement, the imperfections and glorious moments of your cuts, you materialize a sense for your textiles. Putting your collection under such a “microscope” prompts self-analysis and changes you, whether you like it or not.

That is maybe why the grand MAINLINE 24/25 show, which took place in November 2024 at Nová Spirála, seems in many ways groundbreaking. Not only was it designed for this particular space, but it genuinely showed what LAFORMELA wants to be after its thirteen years of existence. Although from a creative perspective, we see the brand rather fine-tuning its previous silhouettes and using improved tailoring (barring a few exceptions, like experimenting with a new night gown and new materials), it is perhaps this drive to self-perfection which proves the brand’s evolution and its determination to move towards a new direction. Whether this will be a step towards small batch production, commissions for foreign distributors or towards even closer collaboration with Francesca Kolowrat remains to be seen. And to grow, one must build on strong foundations.

Jan Králíček