There is something almost monastic about Dušan Paunovic’s commitment to his aesthetic. He has been refining the same highly personal vocabulary for years, with a stubbornness that, in fashion, registers as rather eccentric. The clothes remain impeccably made, obsessively considered, and resistant to the churn of trends. His standards do not waver, nor does his conviction that a wardrobe can be both rigorously constructed and idiosyncratic.
This season, the focus was on color (though, à la Paunovic, color is almost inconspicuous) and poetic Japanese fabrications in shades called Under the Snow, Pink Salt, Underground, and Midnight. Featherweight dusters had lateral slits for extra breeze; bias-cut trousers required five meters of cloth; knits were double layered; and garments were mostly fastened with knots rather than buttons because, as he put it, buttons “destroy everything.”
The same logic extends beyond clothes. Paunovic’s showroom is a cabinet of curiosities where organic-looking ceramics by Carlo Zauli sit alongside sculpture, extinct corals, Etruscan objects, pre-Columbian pieces, and ancient Egyptian antiquities. He prefers sculpture to painting because it has “a third dimension,” and he seems to approach his collection of objects much as he approaches his clothes: through an obsessive, almost archaeological attention to surface.
While talking to Paunovic, the connections become clear. His references are wonderfully eclectic, but his practice is anything but scattered. His collections make a case for extreme focus: the freedom to pursue one’s obsessions so consistently that they become a signature. In an industry addicted to reinvention, Paunovic’s particular eccentricity is that he has never felt the need to reinvent himself.
Source: www.vogue.com
