Bryan Colò

Who: Bryan Colò uses fashion design as a way to address and challenge socially encoded fashion.

When: Inspired by designers like three time Swiss Design Awards winner Mikael Vilchez, Bryan Colò explores, through fashion design, the lines when personal experience crosses social conventions.

Where: CH-2127 Les Bayards is the name of the collection Colò presented at the HEAD for his bachelor’s thesis, as well as being his place of origin. From the countryside to the city and back, Colò's collection is a fierce and moving response to one’s assigned place in society.

What: In his earlier design, “L’auto-portrait du Taureau” (The Self-Portrait of the Bull), Bryan Colò uses a delicate material mostly associated with women’s fashion to build a voluminous and impressive costume. What appears first as a strong figure is in fact a very fragile construction.

This tension between a secure appearance and a disruptive presence is further explored in his most recent collections. While CH-2127 Les Bayards revisits classics such as the blazer and the trench coat, turning them into weird capes and folds and dissolving the identity they are supposed to reinforce, his sportswear pieces — clothing for everyman — are enhanced with further ornamentations, turning the generic into unique baroque subjects.

Why: Based on carnival, Colò’s exuberant, almost grotesque creations open a breach in the normal and play with class and gender codes, sketching out in-between subjectivities.