CHURCH GIRL BALMAIN RENAISSANCE COUTURE @beyonce x @balmain @olivier_rousteing - Image: @louiebanksstudio

Romain Lafarge, aka Romi, is a Paris-based designer with a diverse range of skills spanning from object design to fashion and imagery. With a background in industrial design and design research, Romi has worked with a variety of clients including ateliers, fashion houses, and photographers. Throughout the years, his design practice has evolved to become more reflective and versatile, exploring different mediums and fields of creation.

Fashion, in particular, has become a new territory of experimentation for Romi, having observed it through its iconography, techniques, and history. His first foray into fashion was a series of images produced in collaboration with Léa Marque in 2020, featuring imaginary drapes. This was followed by a clothing project for Loewe with Argot Studio in 2022.

Romi's design philosophy centers on seeking a form of essence at the heart of constraints, creating designs that exude evidential purity. With an interest in 3D printing, he believes that this innovative production method adds a poetic finish to garments and has the potential to redefine the relationship between garments, the body, and their life cycle. Romi’s latest project for Balmain, Renaissance Couture, features a 3D-printed chrome bustier that exudes strength and energy…

CHURCH GIRL BALMAIN RENAISSANCE COUTURE @beyonce x @balmain @olivier_rousteing - Image : @olivier_rousteing

Hello Romi, to give our audience some context could you introduce yourself, and your background?

Hello Coeval, I’m a designer based in Paris. My work is polymorphous in terms of the arch of my field of creation, varying from the object to fashion and covering imagery. I work with various clients such as ateliers, fashion houses and photographers.

I attended studies in industrial design as well as design research and have had the opportunity to gain experience due to projects stemming from imagery output to science and even furniture design.

When I checked your instagram feed I saw that you experimented with different mediums in your designs. How do you think your practice evolved over the years? And could you tell us your relationship with fashion, how did it all start?

What holds my interest is the reflective process in designing and the peek beyond the concerned sectors and their known tools. The intention in this is to have my eyes open to the outside and thus push my mind to versatility and adaptability. Within this perspective, fashion is one of my new territories of experimentation, one that before I observed through its iconography, its techniques and its history. The first project related to this field was a series of images produced with Léa Marque in 2020 with imaginary drapes. The very first applied clothing project I did was made in 2022 for Loewe with Argot Studio.

What intentions and inspirations drive you to create and articulate the craftsmanship that you do?

What drives me in developing a project is the visceral dimension of a design. I seek a form of essence at the heart of the constraints by evacuating what is extrinsic. Either way, it's about finding a form of evidential purity that makes its outcome feel only obvious, whatever the nature of the project withholds. As a result, my inspirations come largely from creators and artists with a connection to purity, sobriety or metaphysics.

LOOK 06 - 07 LOEWE FALL 2022 @loewe @jonathan.anderson - Image : @loewe

3D printing is a discipline to be reckoned with, and now we see the technology is being incorporated in different creative fields. Your work adds a poetic finish to this innovative production method. How do you think such innovations add to the fashion experience and the way we think about garments?

Fashion is a historic field of innovation. Due to its relative newness, 3D printing is being developed in order to define its potential and its limits in fashion. I think that 3D printing will find its place when beyond the garment it will be questioned in itself. It may no longer be a "rapid prototyping" method dedicated to the design premises but may be conceived rather as a "mature production" tool that could be of use within the entire life cycle of the garment. Thus with such innovations, the garment as an object might be put into question once again in the frame its relationship to the body, as an object of production, in its materiality, its aesthetics, its durability, its capacities or even its uses.

Can you describe the ambiance of your studio/workplace? What kind of challenges do you go through on a regular basis and what approaches do you take to overcome them?

I work most of the time from my apartment in Paris.The major challenge is to streamline a flood of complexity in very short delivery times, as is often of use in fashion. Due to the versatility of 3D and its application, the key in starting a process is to quickly summon and associate a broad spectrum of knowledge. The work environment has a great importance in my approaches to overcome my work challenges.
The first approach is to think about the purity of the space of creation so that it influences my voice of thoughts and thus influences indirectly on the management of the complexity of creation. My workspace is therefore intended to be quite monastic, visually calm, with a sound environment close to silence or with music in "infinite loop playback" mode. The second approach parallel to this, namely the composition and organisation of my book collection to keep a physical proximity with sources of inspiration or breathing. My collection revolves around books of photography, modern art, minimalism, Light and Space, the philosophy of aesthetics or even poetry...

LOOK 06 LOEWE FALL 2022 @loewe @jonathan.anderson - Image : @loewe

I know you worked with Argot Studio for the Loewe collaboration. Could you tell us a bit about the workmanship involved in making the pieces and how did the project come about?

For this project, the culmination was to achieve both physical and visual flexibility in a one-piece FDM printed garment. (Fused Deposition Modeling)
To tame the size and flexibility, we thought of the garment as its own supporting structure in order to maintain the print. The process was never a binary transposition between the initial 3D and the final print. We had to constantly juggle between design and material and the machine in a process not necessarily mechanical but almost organic.
Visually, we perceive in this 3D printing project a minerality, and a dynamic texture that echoes the textile mesh of the looms. Which also points out the know-how that Argot Studio has to make 3D printing a poetic tool.

When I look at your work, I sense a softness that exudes strength. It's not genderless, but rather a blend of both masculinity and femininity. So there is a balance but it is not a neutralizing one, in fact it has an energizing effect… Following the sense of poetry woven in your designs, I would like to end the interview with your latest work for Balmain, Renaissance Couture. What does a 3D-printed chrome bustier mean to you? What effect do you think such garment would have on the person wearing it?

First of all, 3D printing makes it possible to have a fusion between technical and aesthetic parts in a single material. This monolithic dimension reinforces the visual presence of the bustier. And due to its rigidity and the assembly of its parts, such a bustier directly echoes ceremonial breastplates, and therefore a protective garment. But beyond this visibly protective dimension, I find its strength in its sensitivity.
The bustier reflects the image of the body it covers and the surrounding space on its surface. So I think the effect of this bustier is an assertion of oneself, a second skin on the outside. And also a garment that, despite its protective aspect, transcends itself by bringing the exterior to life on it.