“This is what happens when you move Los Angeles to Paris,” laughs Julie Kegels. The 25-year-old Antwerp designer recently showed her second collection, with a Californian surfer vibe and a color palette that sometimes bordered on the hallucinatory. She appears in the garden of a brutalist apartment building on the city’s far west side. But the weather in Paris is not great. The rain continued, at best it could be described as relentless. Kegels came out wearing a black coat for curtains, the hood of which was pulled as tight as possible. As for me, despite the Kegel exercise preacher handing me an umbrella, the water kept pouring into my face in a way that can only be described as brutally savage.
But it doesn’t matter! It’s Paris! Damn the rain! Despite the harsh weather, Kegels brought some sunshine, at least symbolically. Her collection is brilliant: a mix of well-intentioned but witty ideas, based on a narrative she describes as, “I had this story in my mind about this classic bourgeois woman and the world of surfing, I wanted to combine the two and create something new, fresh and youthful.” It required some empirical research: Kegels traveled to California with her boyfriend at the beginning of the year to visit his father, and also visited Santa Barbara and Malibu to experience it all.
That means Kegels, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Antwerp (who previously worked for Pieter Mulier at Merrill Roze and later Alaïa), is thinking about spring 2025: cropped cardigan jackets and baggy board shorts that look like bouclé, but it’s actually complicated. For an aquamarine silk empire line slip dress in a Hawaiian floral print – or a bright acid yellow blouse – Kegels pulled out a pair of old board shorts he found in Malibu and photographed the tulle print, which I think is more beautiful, poetic and romantic.
Other humorous items appear: argyle knee-high socks, a Kegel-inspired symbol of conservative/urban female liberation before surfing (she’s been playing golf her whole life); a “clutch” that’s actually a towel folded into the shape of a swan, like you often see Real Housewives do at spas; and dust-covered wallets, because Kegels once saw a really ugly handbag with a dust-covered swan, the whole idea delighted her. So, voila, this is a satirical tribute to some of the most beautiful sports wallets I’ve ever designed. To emphasize the playfulness of it all, Kegel turned the series into a slow, psychedelic, jazzy version of “A Walk in the Rain,” centered on a turquoise-tiled water feature reminiscent of the giant fountains of 1970s Hollywood, a perfect Regency scene.
Ironically, I came to the Kegel Talks because of my West Coast connections. Last summer, I visited the Modern Appealing clothing boutique in San Francisco and met its wonderful owners, brother and sister Ben and Chris Ospital. We started talking about new designers we liked and he mentioned a young Belgian who was doing her first collection and he was really excited about her – yes, Julie Kegels.
It’s easy to share their passion. First, no pun intended, there was a need to add something new to a familiar subject like surfing. But Kegels did it for her because of the way they processed it, pulled it apart and reassembled it with imagination and passion. Secondly, and related to the first point, it centered the narrative around women. The collection displayed a sense of empathy and empowerment, as well as a confident attitude about one’s gender and sexuality; athletic, brunette Frankie Rader looked like a Kegel in the late ’90s, the soul of your movement. She laughed when I suggested it. “Thanks! Yeah, that’s it!”
However, what Kegels said that really struck a chord with me was the birth of this collection, perhaps even more important in a time when we are seeking and craving more depth and detail in design than ever before. “It’s important for clothes to have a story, especially now when so many things look exactly the same,” he said. “There’s an emotion behind everything I do because I’ve always been a dreamer. I always have stories going on in my mind.”
