Journeying has always had a place in the work of young NYC design duo Gauntlett Cheng. For their AW16 campaign images, they evoked a dreamy picture of RV travelling, while “I’ve Been to Paradise But I’ve Never Been to Me,” the title of their AW17 show, was a hat-tip to drag road movie Priscilla Queen of the Desert. 

This season, the collection found inspiration in the line between luxury and gaudy hotels rather than desert campervans – manifesting in clothes that recalled those “purchased at casino stores and worn for too many days,” in the designers’ own words. Barefoot with bedhead hair tied in scrunchies and covered in (fake) tattoos, these were looks for those “vacations that never go beyond hotel doors.”

In this space of entry-level escapism (with a runway show at NYC’s Hotel Americano, appropriately) the Gauntlett Cheng girl was one trying on different outfits and becoming different people as she did so. This was reinforced by a reverberating, repeated line over the pulsing soundtrack by Jeff Joyal and Esra Padgett of Retail Sauce: “A fantasy created by people as we like them to be.”  

Twisted and distorted, the overall effect was of being immersed in the heady, liminal world of the hotel, with twisting corridors and characters behind every door. Watch it unfold below in a film by Harry Hughes.

@gauntlettcheng