Laura and Deanna Fanning join forces with ECCO.Kollektive on an offering that taps into the 60s space race and retrofuturism, and take over East London concept store LN-CC to give it its debut
At any given fashion week, you’re seemingly never more than a few feet away from a Kiko Kostadinov Trivia bag. The awkward little skew-whiff oblong has gone from an IYKYK moment to a bonafide fashion grail, with secondhand iterations scoring big money on depop and Vestiaire. My own personal favourite, a Barbie-pink glittery number with a mirror shine finish that a date once described as ‘Vegas in a bag’ regularly invokes friends to ask when I’m going to be done with it, or if I’d be up for swapping it for not insubstantial wedge of cash whenever it makes an appearance. Reader: I will never sell. Trotting about with it slung over my shoulder or dangling over the crook of my arm makes me far too happy to ever part with it.
Laura and Deanna Fanning – the designers behind the women’s arm of Kiko – play a pretty mean game when it comes to clothes too. Across the course of the last few years, the duo has risen up to become one of the most exciting names on the Paris Fashion Week calendar. Their clothes: clever, conceptual, but always functional and wearable have spawned a cult-like sect of devoted fans across the globe, but the two seem to possess a particularly magic touch when it comes to accessories. From the cute, fuzzy little knitted hats and mittens that litter their mainline collections, to the aforementioned Trivia bag and other totes, to an ongoing collaboration with Asics that often instils some kind of fashion bloodlust in devotees, the Fannings’ knack for creating sellout pieces runs deep.
Now, the Melbourne-born sisters have joined forces for the second and final time with ECCO.Kollektive, which takes ECCO’s principles of considered design and unrivalled craftsmanship and matches it up with designers across high fashion, interiors, and homeware. Launching this week comes a Kiko Kostadinov collab called Hypatia, spanning luxe leather clothing, footwear, and a couple of must-have little bags that will likely cause a frenzy among Kiko stans. Hypatia takes its name from the Ancient Egyptian astronomer, philosopher and mathematician, and came about when the Fannings visited ECCO HQ in Denmark for the first time. “We really saw how precise their process is,” they explain. “Creatively it was fascinating to see how mathematical it all was, so we started thinking about geometry and a very visual idea of that. We also always want to pinpoint key women in history who helped society progress, which is where Hypatia came in.”
The resulting offering features slick leather jackets, dynamic footwear with chunky spheres to the sole, a tiny patent shoulder bag with similar detailing, and more. The palette demonstrates the designers’ proclivity for weirdo, bordering on ugly colours that shouldn’t really work but somehow, actually really do: there’s a deep, wine-y bordeaux, a bright, ripe tomato red, and lots of black and white accents. The whole collection draws on retrofuturism, and air travel uniforms around the time of the 60s’ space race, with the bags drawing on flight attendants’ totes and shoes tapping into the now-defunct future-facing aesthetic of the era. A campaign, shot by Carlijn Jacobs and styled by longtime collaborator and Dazed fashion director Imruh Asha, hammers home the feeling: models in bolshy coloured tights and peppy little minis swing the bags and contort themselves into little boxes like a mid-century Pan-Am ad resurrected for 2024.
Rounding things off, and heralding the drop of this new collection is an innovative new installation at East London concept store LNCC, which seems like a perfect place for it to launch given the interior of the fashion destination resembles sets from Kubrick masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey and a bunch of other 60s sci-fi B-movies. From July 11, the ECCO.Kollektive x Kiko Kostadinov collection will take over the ‘l8te’ section of the space, and obviously there’s going to be a party to kick it all off. “L8te is a space for exploration, and for brands to showcase themselves,” says Reece Crisp, LN-CC buying and creative director. “It’s so important we as an industry go beyond the realms of traditional retail and provide platforms for our partners to tell stories: championing independent designers like Laura and Deanna, as well as the ECCO Kollective, is what LNCC is all about.”
Click through the gallery above for a closer look at the campaign, and head to LN-CC from July 11 to check out the collection and installation for yourself.