Flore de sermet

La Primavera
First springs. First suns. The horizon broadens, the days stretch out and dresses shorten without revealing any of their modesty. We feel lighter. La Primavera is this blooming of the world that we witness and take part in over and over every season, like being born for the first time. A rebirth, a renaissance? La Primavera is also a work of art by Boticelli that inspired designer Flore de Sermet de Tournefort’s first collection for her brand FLR, founded in 2017. Finally, La Primavera is an ode to awakening and to first times, which could be the credo of the young French designer. Exploring the aesthetic of our time, Flore imagines collections as through she were painting a canvas, combining the quality and craftsmanship of Haute Couture, where she acquired her savoir faire, with the audacity of a young designer.

The Art of First Times
“FLR” reads like the contraction of a name - Flore - but also like the contraction of an era reduced to one single piece. It reads like the contraction of an industry that has become uncontrollable and that we have long believed inexhaustible. But times are changing and so is fashion. With FLR, Flore wants to once again give clothing meaning in order to reinstate its value. She favors purposeful designs in search of the uniqueness and rarity of her pieces. Each collection is imagined based on unique pieces or limited series. The designer would rather envision tailor-made over mass quantity.
Which is why upcycling appeared to her as an obvious choice in the creative process: giving a second life to fabrics and garments, making them blossom again in contemporary designs. Fusing the raw and the “lived in” with modern materials to reveal their beauty once again. Birth and rebirth: la Primavera forever.

An Ode to Movement
The South, the sun and the warmth of fabric grazing your skin... The transparency of voile, a shoulder, a drape of cloth, a breast... FLR’s designs are an ode to sensuality. A call to desire and fantasy. Through her clothes Flore reveals the unique personality of everyone who wears them. The body is free here. It plays with materials, shapes and emancipates itself from the strict rules of gender or the norm. All aesthetics are celebrated — all personalities, too. Originality takes precedence over what others will say. No judgement. Things are not spoken, they are suggested instead. The lines are blurred, as this collection shows. The designer dresses male mannequins in a supposedly feminine collection. Fashion is formed and deformed confidently here.
Every spring, Flore has fun with these eternal renewals and once a year she presents a new collection that favors rarity over opulence, and originality over immutability. Every spring, Flore celebrates the movement of fashion: its form, its beauty. And its ideas.

“All the world’s a stage”
In her Brussels atelier Flore invents her looks by drawing inspiration from classic paintings, like her second collection “Dejeuner sur l’herbe” steeped in Manet’s work. But her clothes are also influenced by the silhouettes that she comes across on a path, on a narrow street, in a city. Student at Esmod Berlin, the designer, originally from the south of France, imagines fashion without borders, taboos or labels. Fashion faithful to her vision of the world: powerful, open and natural. The fabric, in Flore’s designs, is like a second skin. It has an organic dimension, almost corporal. With FLR there is no doctrine or instructions for wear; everyone is free to wear her clothes as they wish. A piece can be worn the way you feel: freely.
As Shakespeare wrote, all the world’s a stage, and clothes are the costume we adopt and adapt over time and depending on our moods. According to trends that fade and time that passes. For every collection, Flore invents every look like it’s a character. A singular individual to whom the designer attaches the idea of a garment, a style: a temperament. Each collection presents a series of personified looks that give way to emotion and feeling.