NYLON Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 84) CHRIS BENZ’S INSOUCIANT NEW COLLECTION ENCOURAGES A CAREFREE STATE OF MIND. BY JENNY FELDMAN. PHOTOGRAPHED BY JAMES MAHON THE BENZ stylist: charles manning. hair: aaron pursell at bumble and bumble. makeup: tamah krinsky for estée lauder. model: megan l at new york models. top, pants, and hat by chris benz, vintage vest by screaming mimi’s, stylsit’s own belt. For anyone who’s ever been young and irresponsible, the Pink Martini lyrics, “Je ne veux pas travailler/ Je ne veux pas dejeuner/ Je veux seulement l’oublier” (translation: “I don’t want to work/ I don’t want to eat/ I only want to forget”), tap right into the giddy recklessness of the springtime of life. For 24year-old designer Chris Benz, who launches his namesake collection this fall, those words are the leitmotif behind an entire aesthetic. Influenced by his friend, Lancôme model Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann— the inseparable pair met a couple of years ago when Benz was whiling away an evening, as he is wont to do, on his Bank Street, New York stoop—the line is filled with tomboyish, wideleg trousers in rumpled washed wool, cardigans embroidered with tulle and chain, and belted wrap dresses in shirting fabric. “Everything is super throw-on and easy and meant to go with a wifebeater and jeans,” Benz says, smoking a cigarette over a late breakfast at an outdoor table at his favorite West Village café, Sant Ambroeus. (When a passerby asks to buy a smoke off him, Benz replies, “You can just have it: I hate change”). An adolescence on Seattle’s rainy Bainbridge Island during the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” era left its mark on the future designer. Benz sees a certain glamorous side to grunge, resulting in his tendency to dress down and deconstruct garments, i.e. removing linings from blazers to develop a leaner silhouette. His favorite color, which he makes ample use of in both his clothing and his living space, is gray. “I love tonal grays and taupes mixed with weird, bright colors,” he explains. For fall, neon orange and electric turquoise amp up everything from army-style mink caps to cropped mohair jackets. At Benz’s intimate fashion week presentation at Christie’s Auction House, the pop-inspired palette complemented what the designer refers to as “’60s French bubble gum music” from singers such as Françoise Hardy and France Gall, mixed with modern-day heirs like Pink Martini and Of Montreal. Benz met the DJ who mixed the show, David Katz, at the now-shuttered boîte, Double 7, and the two are collaborating again for the designer’s next presentation. “Spring is about a ’30s Hollywood pioneer,” Benz says. “I’m thinking about a starlet sitting all alone in a huge house in Beverly Hills wearing a long dress.” He glances across the street, momentarily distracted by a passerby wearing a simple strand of Buddhist prayer beads with a preppy jacket. “Oh, how chic,” he says. “I always have about 500 references when I design, you know. That’s how I keep it modern.”
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