Esther Bancel is an unusual fashion designes. The young fashion designer was born in Lyon. However,she later chose Paris as the center of her life. Bancel knows how to create a unique look as a designer. She integrates unusual ideas into her fashion. She describes this herself as “new couture”. Together with her husband Morgan she runs her exclusive fashion label “Ester Bancel” in Paris.
It is unusual that Bancel basically designs its collections as unisex collections. In principle, both sexes wear the same fashion. Maybe they combine the pieces differently, but the gender differences are blurring. The designer’s favorite color is clearly black. But the Goth look is not Bancels domain, despite some borrowings from punk. Rather, Esther would like to establish an “unbridled” form of elegance with her fashion.
A touch of punk is the new elegance
Streetwear connoisseurs associate Los Angeles with streetwear, just as anyone would seek the cradle of grunge in Seattle. Punk is from Great Britain, like Ester Bancel and her husband. But not London was chosen as the location of Esther Bancels fashion label, but the capital of elegant fashion: Paris. Still, Esther Bancel’s fashion is not typically Parisian. American and British influences are unmistakable.
How does the young designer combine rebellion and elegance? Quite simply: fashion has always been about contrasts. These bring excitement to the design. Fashion makes new references, but incorporates the familiar. So it makes sense that Esther Bancels collections contain downright classic pieces. Bancel sees no contradiction to her creed. It combines a classic blazer with Victorian accents. A touch of punk attitude or underground flair can be seen as a reference in all Bancel designs.
Classic combined with idiosyncratic ideas
Esther Bancel also pays homage to the most British of all fabrics – tweed. However, only the processed material is classic. Bancels jacket design, on the other hand, is highly idiosyncratic. A typical Ester Bancel suit is vaguely reminiscent of a classic men’s suit. But it is completely cut to your own standards. Then the suit is combined with printed big shirts and tough boots. Young and old people should feel comfortable in Bancels fashion. For them, each piece is unique, a fashionable work of art. And that’s how it works.
Bancel deliberately does not produce punk fashion. Rather, she uses punk as an artistic reference to design her own form of elegance. Bancel is more concerned with the philosophy behind the punk movement: artistic freedom, unrestrained creativity and self-expression without barriers. Undermining fashionable norms is also a content that comes from punk. Bancel wants the wearer of their fashion to look as unconventional as they feel. It is also unusual: the young fashion label dedicates each of its collections to a specific subculture.
The Esther Bancel collections
Even as a young person, Esther Bancel dealt with the dark side of being human. She decided that everyone had to accept these aspects as well, or better still: sublimate them. Bancels fashion is an expression of these thoughts. The designer tries to express the darkness slumbering in us with her creations as well as the poetry that surrounds our ambivalent and contradicting nature. Bancel asks itself every day why we should be creative and create or buy fashion.
The fashion designer is deliberately not aiming for mass compatibility with her “Neocutoure” collections. The pieces in her “New Drop”, “All Creations” and “Unique Pieces” collections are only available in limited numbers. Every month there are new creations that can be ordered as “Drop of the Month” via their unisex e-shop. The delivery follows one to one and a half months later after production.
Bancel prefers fabrics made in Italy or France that are made under ethical conditions. They also meet their high quality standards.
Leftover materials from a collection are also used for fashion experiments. Prototypes of your designs or pieces of clothing that do not meet your requirements are artistically upcycled as the mood takes you. Even such unique items are then sold as “upcycling parts” in Bancels online shop. Esther Bancel does not have collections that follow a tried and tested pattern every season. For her, creativity and spontaneity are top priority.
Esther bancel designs her collections inspired by the beauty that in her eyes often remains unseen by others. The idea behind the punk movement can flow into their designs, as can the life and death of the “Elephant Man” inspire Joseph Merrik to design.
