Mode Suisse 2025: Swiss fashion's "quiet hope" speaks volumes
Twenty-two designers and well over 100 looks may not be unusual for a fashion week. However, the annual Mode Suisse is not a sprawling, multi-day event, but a single, condensed evening celebrating Swiss talent.
The several hours long soirée began at 2pm GMT with a showroom. Guests previewed the looks before the collections were moved backstage, leaving empty hangers. The combination of finger food and drinks among the catwalk looks shortly before the show may have unsettled some but everything went smoothly. While fashion shows elsewhere are notoriously late, Mode Suisse's first show started on time.
The rapid succession of looks and designers over a long period of time tested the guests' attention spans. Organiser Yannick Aellen seemed aware of this. Thus, the evening began with an announcement asking the audience to follow the programme to identify the presenting labels correctly. Only then the music began, which was a mix of electronica and folk by Bit-Turner, Gael Faure and Jono McCleery. A look by Maximilian Preisig, freshly graduated from the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, opened the fashion marathon.
A colourful stage full of Swiss designs
The opening look consisted of orange trousers and a white oversized T-shirt. While not a groundbreaking silhouette on its own, the T-shirt's slogan, "Die Leise Hoffnung" ("Quiet Hope"), added weight.
The message was lost somehow though in view of the bright trousers, which threatened to slip off the model with every step. Stroke of genius or mishap? Perhaps both. In any case, the incident was subject to animated discussion among the guests and the image inadvertently became the leitmotif of an evening otherwise difficult to put into words.
That politics play a role for designer Anastasia Bull was already apparent from a conversation before the show, and not just through her words. Bull's backstage pass featured a pin with the Palestinian flag and the theme of her collection was "burying the patriarchy". On the catwalk, this translated primarily into opulence. Sequined and embroidered minidresses met with a riot of colour, at least until it slowly gave way to darkness to make way for the aforementioned "funeral look”. This was also reminiscent of a sombre bride, complete with a crown of flowers and a bouquet.
Jill Bloch, in turn, countered the “Trad Wife” narrative with tongue-in-cheek subversion. Models combined bread and shovels with miniskirts, bloomers and wellington boots, or gardening gloves with sometimes ultra-feminine silhouettes. The whole thing seemed to land somewhere between ballerina-farm girl and urban metropolitan attitude. The proud parents, or so it seemed, clapped and shed a tear or two in the audience – a small family moment on the Mode Suisse stage.
While Bloch populated the catwalk with everyday farm objects, Lundi Piscine literally immersed the audience in water. Parachute pants, balaclavas and a top referencing the 500 euro note were inspired by workwear and uniforms that met with life belts, fishing rods and life jackets. This imagery brought the desire for a better world directly onto the catwalk. The statement “We want a better world” was emblazoned on both clothing and a flag. It is also characteristic for the work process of designer Lucie Guiragossian, whose materials are locally sourced and upcycled.
No less striking was the appearance of Tati, a label that combines folkloric-sexy knit-punk with upcycled textiles. Handmade knitwear is not generally considered the epitome of sexiness. Yet this is precisely the strength of designer Tatjana Haupt, who convinced both the organisers and the Mode Suisse jury and was included in the programme as a newcomer this year. Like Lundi Piscine, Sonney and Thomas Clément, she was supported by the D.E.S.I.G.N. Foundation, which covers the entire participation costs as well as part of the expenses for four talents under 35 from the Mode Suisse & Friends line-up.
Tati knew how to transform the catwalk into a playful, queer world. At the end of the show, Haupt, surrounded by her giggling team, stepped onto the catwalk, laughing and holding hands. This image radiated the same carefree energy as her fifteen looks. Between plush cats, Y2K allusions and tongue-in-cheek humour, the collection formed a quirky manifesto and a clear invitation to revolution, visible on shirts, accessories and in every lovingly staged detail.
JMQ – Jordan Martinez Quintana — exuded almost as much joie de vivre as Tati. In the show notes, the designer's collection was described as “maximalist fashion, somewhere between a flamenco feria and a parking lot rave”, and in this case, the description matched the programme exactly. Polka dots met fruit prints; flamenco-inspired ruffled skirts and headscarves stood alongside mini baguettes and shopping trolleys, perfect for a slightly kitschified trip to the market. Another look featured a bare chest plastered with motorsport stickers, an oversized gold chain and an opulently embroidered puffer jacket – an ensemble between street style and pop culture collage that deconstructed images of masculinity with humour and exuberant energy.
Almost as much joy as JMQ's collection, however, was the realisation that the beginning of a well-deserved breather had been reached. The first part of the evening-filling show lasted almost an hour longer than scheduled. The models had not yet left the catwalk when the approximately 400 visitors rose from their chairs, ready to refill their glasses and let sink in what they had just seen.
Despite this stormy run to the bar, most found their way back in time and in an orderly fashion for the second part of the evening, which had no less variety and abundance to offer than the first.
A particular highlight was provided by the three students selected for the showcase by fashion school HEAD – Genève: Alan Clerc, Marie Boutin and Thibaut Barraud. Almost more than any other collection, the young talents demonstrated a fine sense of intuition, seamlessly merging concept and commerce.
Clerc originally designed his collection for the male body – his own, to be precise. Heavily influenced by classic tailoring, occasionally reminiscent of the work of Martin Margiela, it explored the construction and deconstruction of the body and was presented on both male and female models.
Boutin, in turn, was inspired by motorsport and bikes, creating a leather collection with precisely crafted corsets, bralettes, jackets, coats and trousers – all pieces easily imaginable on young pop stars, both on stage and in everyday life. A silk dress with a frayed hem, as if it had touched the tyres of a motorbike, was borrowed from her father's motorcycle suit prints and transferred to Boutin’s own designs. Barraud, the only bachelor student among the three, — Clerc and Boutin recently completed their master's degrees — presented a black- and-white collection of silky tops and figure-hugging dresses – as precise and convincing as the work of his colleagues.
The designs of HEAD graduate Thomas Clément who presented next appeared sculptural. He did not appear under the umbrella of the school, but as an independent designer. The starting point were everyday actions such as wearing a backpack or familiar shapes such as the silhouette of a dressmaker’s dummy. Instead of quoting these one-to-one, Clément alienated them into irritating body extensions. An olive-green top, for example, resembled an upside-down backpack, the weight of which sat exactly where the chest normally shapes the body. Underneath, a skirt of pink and petrol-coloured fringes swung with every movement like a second skin. Clément designed body images that seemed neither stable nor self-evident, but displaced, reassembled and thus fragile – a poetic play with the question of where the body ends and fashion begins.
As the evening drew to a close, it became clear once again that Mode Suisse is much more than a mere presentation platform. It is a space for attitude, experiments and stories – for fashion that provokes, entertains and sometimes irritates. From provocative statements and playful subversion to subtle social commentary, it spans a spectrum that showcases the diversity of the Swiss scene in all its facets. The framework seems almost too wide for the comparatively short event. On site, there would have been enough vision and talent for a longer presentation format – be it over a whole day or perhaps even over two days.
This brings us full circle, because perhaps that is the "quiet hope" of the beginning: that the platform will continue to grow and offer young talents more space in the future to experiment, develop and shape the Swiss fashion scene more strongly.
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