A Love Letter to Urban Paris - Song For The Mute 22.2 Collection Les Olympiades

Song For The Mute AW 22.2 is a literal product of its time and environment, a translation of Lyna Ty’s photographic and emotional memories. Her visual language depicts a very real, very concrete childhood replete with encounters, routines, and community in the Olympiades housing project built in the 13th district of Paris.

Eyes wide open to her surroundings, rose tinted as the mind does when reminiscing, Ty turns monotony, solitude, and difficulty into beauty. She finds the uncomfortable and then reverts it, culminating in the sweet spot that is her clothing collection. In classic Song For The Mute style, the clothing seasons are presented as chapters, each editorialised with individual stories, fabrics and processes. As per their most recent Beast collection - chaos is good, what is unmatched is matched, wrong is right; the harmony of opposites coming together for the right balance.

Dripping with sentimentality, every piece of the collection is a reference to life in Tour Tokyo. Layered tonal grey looks suggest concrete buildings, and the recurrent chequered print may depict housing blocks with their never ending symmetrical square windows. Whilst some looks are sleek and structured, others toy with streetwear and others fall right into the casual category, a preview to their upcoming collaboration with Adidas. Playing with contrasts, Ty underpins the collection through ‘Juxtaposed Narratives, Contrasting Materials’.

But it is also, and most importantly, humans that inform her clothing. ‘Communal Strangers’ share neon lit streets which are translated in bold yellow and pink neon jackets and pants. Acid wash and denim on denim ubiquitous of the 90s come into play for both men and women, reminiscent of the teenagers and family that surrounded her.

The SS22 Avenue D’Ivry collection is a precursor to the same aesthetics; ‘kids exploring the many intricacies of Les Olympiades; playful prints featuring handwritten notes or complaint letters from the lobby, warped VHS screens, persimmons from our fruit bowl and distorted sprinkler heads.’ In the same way, the AW22 collection is replete with references and a careful attention to detail. Brooches on jackets reveal names of cities in French - London and Antwerp among Les Olympiades. Perhaps it indicates an opening to the world, a sense of what is to come.

Nostalgic and poignant, Song For The Mute 22.2 is a romantic ode to childhood and community. As Ty wrote in her BLED collection 'We must reflect and reconnect with our origins in order to ground ourselves, recalling where we came from in order to situate ourselves within time.'

Words by Pooja Lucie Willmann

14/02/2022