Vancouver designer inspired by gay icon Norma Desmond

Vancouver fashion designer Evan Ducharme debuted his fall/winter 2014 collection at East Van Studios on Aug 22. The show saw the designer reimagine 1950s glamour for a dystopian future.

Ducharme’s initial inspiration was the desperate and delusional Norma Desmond, the fame-hungry silent-film star eternally ready for her closeup. After discovering Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Ducharme began to juxtapose the old-Hollywood style of Norma Desmond with the structure and confinement of a new world order.

According to the press release, Ducharme “decided to interpret the futuristic dystopian society of Metropolis through the eyes of Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond by comparing a cataclysmic decline in society to the performer’s nostalgia-ridden descent into madness. Ducharme does this by his notion of focusing on the seaming and details of his signature silhouettes, introducing graphic lines, mesh inserts, and metal hardware.”

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