A new Courrèges: Débutant Drew Henry finds joy in disruption
For Spring-Summer 2027, Drew Henry made his Courrèges debut with a lighter, more playful take on the house’s Space-Age codes. Anders Christian Madsen reviews the show.
What inspired Drew Henry’s debut collection for Courrèges? “Courrèges!” he said after the show. “Falling in love with the house and letting it be what it is and just celebrating that. I had so much fun in the process because I just let myself play and I didn’t take it so seriously. I take it very seriously, but it was when I was not doing anything with any expectation that the good stuff happened. So, I tried to follow that through the process and show something really joyful, something that can make the whole team happy. Because it’s not just about me. I have a wonderful team of people, and I’ve been very lucky,” he paused, and burst into tears.
Until now, the 38-year-old, South African-born designer had spent his career behind the scenes at some of fashion’s most influential houses. He interned for Phoebe Philo at Céline while he was at Central Saint Martins and joined her full-time after his graduation. A stint at J.W. Anderson followed before he reunited with Philo in 2020 as head of design for the launch of her eponymous label. In 2023, he moved to Burberry as senior design director under Daniel Lee. Henry was appointed artistic director at Courrèges in March this year, tasked with following in the rather formidable footsteps of Nicolas Di Felice, who made the house relevant again.
Henry’s approached the Space-Age cool at the heart of Courrèges with a kind of cartoonish shape and colour language that ultimately felt light-hearted. Utilitarian jackets and coats cut in retro-futuristic silhouettes turned from beige into shades of deep orange and lime, and frayed gilets and skirt suits almost had a spongy sensibility to the fabrication. Henry made skirts and harnesses out of industrial belts, put boys in trapeze mini dresses and unearthed some crumbled-up archival hats in crazy colours that added to his sense of animation. It made for an at once simpler but also more challenging wardrobe than that of his predecessor.
“With Courrèges, it’s the intention. It’s not about the sixties or skirt suits. It’s about the time and how that was received at the time. It’s hard to look back at the clothes and see them as, like, punky, rebellious now, because we’re so far removed from that imagery. So, I tried to not make it about the sixties but make it about something a bit disruptive, and in a weird way, I found it disruptive to be positive,” Henry said. “You know, things are tough everywhere in all sorts of ways and I needed some joy. And I think that’s very Courrèges.”
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