Comos Bassington is a brand new menswear label based in Melbourne that has a very defined aesthetic. According to the designer, who shall remain nameless for now, Comos Bassington “embraces sex, slickness and shades of black and blue”.
“I renounce false idols, brands who preach slim-cut jeans and baseball caps, [I embrace] pants that hang too low or shirts with obnoxiously large cuffs … I love large things,” says the designer. “Life is too short to slug it in sweats.”
The designer’s interest in fashion comes from its transformative quality: “You can be anyone you want. You can be a lover in leather, sensual in satin, a vixen in velvet … all you need to do is change the jacket you’re wearing.”
Comos Bassington has a very 70s Bowie vibe, the mix of sharp men’s tailoring with more revealing and slightly feminine fitting looks very Studio 45. The addition of more streamlined, almost Matrix-inspired pieces pushes the brand’s aesthetic into the early 90s, as do the micro-mini in fur with matching knee high platform boots.
The narrow cuts, belly-baring hipster waistlines, low cut necklines and tiny little skirts make the Comos Bassington pieces equally able to be worn by snake-hipped guys and girls, although the designer asserts that this is a menswear brand. All the pieces are sampled on a male body.
Comos Bassington fits neatly into the new non-gendered or non-binary definition of fashion that includes brands like Korean label Blindness and South Africa’s Rich Mnisi – clothing that is designed around an aesthetic rather than based on an activity or gender.
These are clothes for clubbing and high-altitude bar-hopping; not something you would likely wear to work. As the designer says, “the main concept behind the brand is Memento Mori; completely serious but also slightly ironic”.
The tongue-in-cheek attitude of the brand’s designer is not meant to put you off, he says it is more about trying to create a sense of mystery and wonder, as he wants people to fall in love with the garments and the concept.
He is quite serious, however, when it comes to the sustainable aspects of Comos Bassington saying that he looks for deadstock fabrics and materials, onshore manufacturing, slow fashion and working with local, Melbourne-based talent.
As for his future goals? Well, nothing more than world domination.
Comos Bassington is a new label; you can follow its development on Instagram at @comosbassington, and pre-order garments via Direct Message.
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