Andrea Crews to Stage Fashion Show Process As Performance

PERFORMANCE: Andrea Crews founder Maroussia Rebecq is taking the concept of backstage access to new heights. The Paris-based designer, who launched her label in 2002 as an art project geared around upcycling vintage garments, plans to stage the preparations for her fall 2018 co-ed show as a performance, titled “How to Make a Great Fashion Show.”

From today through Jan. 17, Rebecq, along with the members of her collective, will hold castings and fittings, shoot the brand’s look book and hold the final hair and makeup tests in the Le C?ur gallery in Paris’ Marais district. The actual show will be held on Jan. 20 during Paris Men’s Collections, with the location yet to be confirmed.

“This period, from now through to the show, is a very intense period where we’re building the story of our collection. This year we wanted to make an event out of it,” said Rebecq. “It will also allow for some distance from what I do. Preparing for a show can be both a highly stressful and beautiful experience, and for me gathering everyone together in a performance will make it more of a joyful, playful event.”

The designer, who is 40 but sees herself “very much as a Millennial,” said she will also “activate my phone and social media network.”

“It’s about showing the Andrea Crews way of working, through building all these partnerships. I really want to push the DNA of the brand — who we are, why we are doing what we do, how and with whom,” continued the designer, adding that the brand, with its art-activist roots, has transformed into more of a fashion label over the years.

Among other projects geared around sharing, the designer later this month will be participating in a fees-free fashion school initiative in Saint-Ouen, a Paris suburb, headed by Nadine Gonzalez, who led a similar project in the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

“It’s a mini fashion school called Casa 93 in a rough suburb of Paris, with only 12 places for students. It’s a wonderful project,” said Rebecq, whose label is distributed in around 50 stores including Concrete in Amsterdam, Traffic in L.A. and B5 in New York.

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