While Marco Ribeiro was getting noticed and gaining traction within the Paris fashion scene before the pandemic, the shutdowns put every thing on hold. Ribeiro was full of self-doubt and waffled on what direction he should take his designs. He decided to follow his instincts, amping up his use of color even during those dark days.

“I believed, ‘Let’s rejoice, let’s do something colourful, explore shapes.’ It was a turning point for me, and folks were so into the gathering, so receptive,” he said. One in all those individuals who noticed was Harry Lambert, stylist to Harry Styles, who wore Ribeiro’s pieces on tour and on album promos.

Now together with his first show staged during Paris Fashion Week, the Marco collection was presented as part performance art, part ritual dance and all joy. Dancers emerged from fabric hung from the partitions as a rolling rack with the gathering sat center stage, while they moved among the many looks.

Ribeiro continued to explore the circles which have change into his signature, and revisited pompom nipple T-shirts and sheer body stockings. He used stripes as waves as touch points, particularly well on a pink and green pajama-style shorts suit.

To say he toned down the colour is a little bit of a stretch, but this season he used softer pastels on T-shirts and even debuted his version of a khaki pant, though still embellished with subtle ruffle pleats on the pocket. Titled “Waves of Love,” he was looking for a more feminine energy this season.

Ribeiro’s Afro-Brazilian perspective means he uses dance as inspiration, and plays with fabrics and shapes to explore the relation between the items and movement. At the top of the presentation, dancers got here together in formation for a strong, almost ritualistic finale routine.

“When music comes on something magical happens,” he said. “For me, you set things on and OK, it’s a shirt. Nevertheless it also needs the human body for movement, because with no body it’s just an object. After they come together as a mixture, they’ve fluidity. It’s about coming back to the body.”

“I like the standard French couture, but I also feel like I bring something as a Black, gay, Latino man — it’s already quite loads. But the concept is that other brands can do black-and-white looks, but we even have color so why not use that? I’m attempting to bring a Latin American spirit to Europe. The colours are positivity and joy, and I feel prefer it’s vital.”

He started off with womenswear, but after stylists began placing pieces on men — including Styles’ stylist Lambert — he has now added more traditionally masculine-coded pieces. Nevertheless it is evident that the gathering doesn’t have boundaries.

“Garments don’t have a gender,” he said. “Human people put an agenda on a garment, but garments are only garments, you realize?”

Earlier this yr, Styles approached him to collaborate on the primary makeup products in his Pleasing skincare line. The result’s an eclectic collection of pressed powder pigments, cream colours and multi-use gloss. Ribeiro’s fashion week presentation also doubled because the official launch.

Working with Styles was easy, said Ribeiro, because the singer gave him carte blanche to have creative direction on every thing from the products, to the ad images and the packaging.

“It was huge for me, and he was so lovely. It was very fluid and like working with friends. We sort of shared the identical beliefs,” said Ribeiro. The scope of labor pushed latest boundaries for the young designer, though he was clear on his own concepts from the very starting. “They involved me in the entire process, and that was very beautiful. It was difficult, in an excellent way. Difficult but joyful inside it, in some way.”

He sees connections between the 2 worlds, and it’s one other aspect where he desires to be fluid and break down boundaries.

“Fashion needs beauty, and sweetness needs fashion. I need it to be near people, so it doesn’t feel like this ‘high fashion’ distance in some way. I like this concept that there’s no distance between me and also you and folks — we’re all the identical. In order that’s what I attempted to embrace they usually were very completely satisfied with the concept,” he said of hosting the Pleasing launch at his show as a substitute of some formal party.

As for having the launch of a makeup line at an event where the face was not the main target, Ribeiro answers together with his usual insouciance. “Why be so cliché? OK, it’s a beauty brand, but there are such a lot of things we will do as a beauty brand and as a fashion brand, where we will bend the bounds and be more more fluid. You understand — why do we want to separate fashion?”