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Marcelo Burlon’s New Collection Celebrates the Post-Apocalyptic Road Trip
Marcelo Burlon, the designer behind the Milan-based menswear label Marcelo Burlon County of Milan, has worn many hats throughout his long career. The club promoter-turned-magazine editor-turned-DJ, who entered the fashion scene as a purveyor of graphic t-shirts, has proudly built on his outsider status over the years to produce runway collections that draw on the street and the wilderness alike, channelling a heady balance of technical precision and eye-catching impulsivity.
This week, Burlon announced his latest collection with the release of a short film by experimental filmmaker Tommasso Ottomano. The film, which follows a group of young men as they speed down motorways, dance on terraces and skate across vast concrete expanses, is an ode to the open road and the seedy underbelly that thrives beneath it. Over a string of hazy scenes that traverse eerie Mars-like landscapes, red-lit strip clubs and deserted Spanish towns, the viewer gets the sense that s/he’s joining these men—decked out in garments that blur streetwear with Kerouac-ian road-wear—on some sort of post-apocalyptic road trip. Each moment, detached from the last, occurs in total isolation, as if this group of friends might be the only people left on earth, a feeling that conjures both freedom and foreboding.
The new collection, captured in the photographs of Francis Delacroix, offers a mix of sun-baked skate silhouettes and brightly-colored artisanal thread work. Burlon draws inspiration from two of his perennial inspirations: the fluorescent pulse of a ‘90s nightclub and the geometric elegance of Patagonian textiles (the region of Argentina where he was born). With this presentation Burlon has managed, as always, to deftly blend his worlds, extending beyond his favored inspirations to produce a collection that, like the designer himself, revels in its many contrasts.
View the collection here.