Hollywood is a beautiful mess, and August Barron knows it. For Walk of Fame, Lotta Volkova styles a cast of fading starlets, wild dreams and backstage meltdowns in a love letter to fame at its most chaotic.
August Barron presented its ninth collection, “Walk of Fame,” styled by Lotta Volkova, at La Cigale in Paris, drawing on a cast of cinematic characters obsessed with the pursuit, performance and preservation of stardom. Referencing films including Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood 90028, Boogie Nights, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and All That Jazz, Bror August Vestbø and Benjamin Barron imagined a character suspended somewhere between Old Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. The collection’s origins date back to a Los Angeles trip three years ago with Smerz, who also soundtracked and walked the show, bringing together different eras of Hollywood through a collage of music and archival references.
At La Cigale, models moved through a dressing room imagined after a glamorous meltdown, complete with lipstick and powder stains, pink feathers and crushed cigarettes, while hair appeared frozen mid-blow and others carried wigs as if rushing between auditions. Among the familiar faces on the runway were Kiko Mizuhara, Smerz’s Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt, Kai Schreiber, Fine and Issa Lish, adding another layer of star power to August Barron’s cinematic fantasy while the show notes stated “In Loving Memory of Dolly Parton”.
That fixation with becoming a star runs through the clothes, where fantasy constantly collides with reality. Skirts with enlarged suspender-like breasts exaggerate the distance between dreams of grandeur and their more complicated reality, while undone bustiers, Playboy bunny suits and sliced satin evening dresses expose layers beneath, evoking the process of getting into character. Seventies sportswear takes inspiration from the Hollywood Walk of Fame through oversized star motifs, while organza veils mute pieces such as the Faded Babydoll Dress, suggesting a star slowly dimming. The palette moves between vivid purple and orange, faded pink and mint, ruby and sapphire, creating a collision of Hollywood eras. New accessories extend the fantasy, from the Valley Platform stripper heel and tiara adorned Audrey Sandal to the Sonny and Bunny bags and crystal embellished Buck sunglasses created with Port Tanger.
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