Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the broader world.
Tennessy Thoreson has been keeping a fairly large secret for a 12 months now. The recent fashion school grad was named the most recent “Amigo” of AZ Factory, the brand founded by the late Alber Elbaz—previous talents tapped for the respect include Thebe Magugu and Ester Manas—and given the chance to carry his first major show during high fashion week in Paris. He just had to maintain it quiet until fairly recently, a challenge that surely couldn’t have been easy for the bubbly young designer.
Even as compared to the opposite up-and-comers who’ve been named Amigos, Thoreson is unusually green: the show took place only a 12 months and a half after his graduation. Within the meantime, Thoreson interned at Chloé and now works at Paco Rabanne, while also designing costumes for drag friends and contributing looks for the French edition of Drag Race.
“I didn’t waste any time,” jokes the green-haired 25-year-old. Indeed, a full-fledged Paris atelier is bustling behind him, including a photographer whose regular flashes punctuate our conversation. So, you would possibly ask, how did he make the accelerated journey from college corridors to a couture runway? Does he possess some kind of superpower?
A glance from Thoreson’s Geneva show.
Courtesy of the designer.
In a way, yes. The moment got here about after Thoreson met Richemont executive Mauro Grimaldi after his graduate fashion show on the Geneva University of Art and Design. That award-winning collection showcased his love of superheroes. Growing up with a Marvel-obsessed father, Thoreson loved watching Spider-Man weave his web, but his favorite characters were at all times the heroines, “the badass girls who had superpowers, where nothing can could get of their way.” As a child, he found the thought comforting. “Sometimes you face weakness or you’re feeling defenseless. I used to be dreaming of getting these superpowers, so if someone desired to mess with me, I could face it.”
Drag Race France winner Paloma in a glance from the AZ Factory collection.
Courtesy of the designer.
One other major influence on his work has been drag culture. Thoreson got into drag throughout the COVID lockdown as “a approach to express myself, because I used to be feeling so restrained. Each time I did a makeup [look], I’d post it on Instagram to get people’s response.” He also used it, he says, as a approach to “escape the male gaze.” Thoreson ended up connecting with drag queens on the platform and, after moving to Paris, in person, and located that many in the neighborhood had strained relationships with their families consequently of coming out as queer or doing drag, which, he notes, may be “one other coming-out, sometimes.” Creating their very own found families often became a necessity. Along with his designs, he says, “I create sisterhoods, which could be very vital within the drag community.”
One among Thoreson’s sketches for the gathering.
Courtesy of the designer.
While Thoreson never got to satisfy the late Alber Elbaz, he attended “Love Brings Love,” the exhibit on the designer on the Palais Galliera. “I could see that every one the designers really had affection [for him],” he says. “On this fashion atmosphere, which is brutal more often than not,” Elbaz found a approach to bring “subjectivity and sensitivity, which really resonates with me.” His legacy is certainly one of “inclusivity, positivity, power, and joy.”
A glance from Thoreson’s collection for AZ Factory.
Courtesy of the designer.
Those words could also describe Thoreson’s show for the brand. “I didn’t want simply to do a basic runway, which is super boring,” he tells me. As an alternative, the cabaret-style show last night on the Paradiso Club, titled “Super Heroines,” was a colourful, theatrical celebration of self-expression, complete with singing, fire-eating, snatched neon catsuits, and pretend fur-trimmed picture hats. The 12 models were each given superpowers to act out. The goal, he says, was “to indicate you may be as big as you wish. Every thing is allowed.” In any case, each superheroes and drag queens are larger than life.
Tennessy Thoreson.
Courtesy of the designer.
Thoreson’s participation during couture week is an element of an ongoing trend of younger, more avant-garde-oriented talents finding their approach to the shape (see: Area, Pyer Moss, Charles de Vilmorin. ) “I understand that [couture] could sound not relevant, but for me, it’s also the moment to be surprised and to surprise people,” and to emphasise craftsmanship, he says, noting that every one the pieces were hand-created by seamstresses. “After I was a student, I used to be doing the whole lot by hand by myself. I do know a number of students hate sewing, but I actually loved it.”
On this time of austerity, scaling back, and “stealth wealth,” Thoreson is sticking with maximalism. “Why be boring when you may be extra?” he says. “That’s my motto, because for me, as a drag queen, we have to be extra, we want to [put on] a show. Even should you are wearing something easy, you may have to present something.”
Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director and the writer of the book Dress Code. Her work has previously appeared within the Latest York Times, the Latest Yorker, W, Latest York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.
