Sizzling summer for Elvis-era 1950s swimwear
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With the rising temperatures heralding the arrival of summer, it’s quite fitting that the three-day Bench Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2024 (BFWSS24) was bookended by beachwear from La Vie En Rose and Bench.
La Vie En Rose’s solids and sparsely printed florals posed a delicious contrast to Bench’s 1950s-inspired collection.
Dipping into Elvis Presley’s Hawaii era, Bench featured bright, bold bikinis, wraps, polos and swim shorts in tropical prints.
“It was the perfect reference to mix our Bench Swim collection with the rest of our ’50s rockabilly looks,” said Bench founder Ben Chan.
While Bench charged swim, street and school wear with the spirit of American rock, Urban Revivo infused cowboy aesthetics into school cool.
Cotton On featured motorsports fashion and demonstrated layering that brought back the dress-over-jeans look of the early aughts, while Human brought in contemporary artist Gabriel Tiongson to spray paint on garments on the spot with his signature “demented Mickey Mouse” and other ‘90s cartoon, toy and video game characters.
Tiongson, whose month-long exhibit at Space Encounters Gallery opened on the same day his works were trotted out as part of Human’s collection for BFWSS24, said he wished for his artwork to imbue the garments with positivity.
While standing on wood pallets as he worked on covering a denim jacket with his illustrations, he told Lifestyle: “I am not the same person I was a second ago, yesterday, 10 years ago. So I have to look forward. Whatever happened in the past, we can always do better. We can always be better people to ourselves and to the people around us.”
