Gamut: a new, collectively designed Parisian fashion label

Gamut is a new fashion collective making its mark on the Parisian fashion scene, a ready-to-wear label that thrives on an instinctive, shared creative approach. Gamut doesn’t have a creative director, but is led by a group of six designers, three young women and three young men, plus a photographer in charge of the visual side of things, all of them working together as a horizontal organisation on the label's creativity and development.

“We are like a family. Each of us has their own domain, but we all have huge respect for one another,” said one of the members of the collective, who wished to remain anonymous. They are all French and in their twenties, and they all graduated from La Cambre, Brussels’ renowned fashion academy, between 2011 and 2017. After graduation, they all returned to Paris, each working independently, for fashion labels or other brands, as style consultants or in entirely different fields.

Back from a holiday together, they decided to launch their own collective label. The name they chose, Gamut, is original and vaguely mythological. The brand was set up in Paris in December 2017, and is self-financed by each member of the collective, and occasionally also via crowdfunding campaigns. The division of labour within the collective reflects its members’ individual inclinations, be it menswear, womenswear, knitwear etc.

Gamut debuted last September, during the Paris Fashion Week, with a catwalk show followed by a gala evening staged by Chosen Family, the section of the collective that organises events, at La Station–Gare des Mines, a venue in north-eastern Paris popular with the city’s alternative art scene. The ideal place for Gamut to unveil its unique fashion, at the intersection between menswear and womenswear, between sportswear and couture, a kaleidoscopic style, the collective first deconstructing clothes and then reinventing them.

Male models wore skirts and glamorous, ruched lady evening gloves, and the women did the same, appropriating typical men's clothes. The classic black pinstripe suit is featured ubiquitously across the collection, popping up as an overcoat or long gloves, as a skimpy corset or an oversize asymmetric apron, a maxi skirt or a sleeveless jacket. The garments are sometimes zipped, sometimes gathered by drawstrings, and can be disassembled and worn, anorak-style, over colourful knitwear.

“Our style is instinctive, with a quirky, humorous take on things. We are all in love with tailoring techniques. In the end, the result is a collage-like aesthetic, with a very varied wardrobe,” said one of Gamut's designers. “We work hard on each item, and they are all highly wearable. The idea is to create an open-ended wardrobe that can be assembled at will,” he added.

Gamut's clothes are all made in Parisian workshops.

Gamut: a new, collectively designed Parisian fashion label

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