COYNE

Founded by Matthew Coyne in 2018 originally as a menswear project, Coyne explores American suburban youths' engagement with the underground, a discovery of urban culture from the periphery. Banal and classic American suburbanisms become a language for the exploration and synthesis of a variety of visual threads. The collections build a contemporary wardrobe of fun designs with graphic contours and fizzy colors that reflect the playful nature of suburban youth culture. Having branched from menswear across categories, the brand is rooted in strong cuts and an emphasis on construction. The label draws upon Coyne’s own background growing up in a small American town with five older brothers. From this anti-urban, masculine world, Coyne negotiates the mystery of suburban youth culture within the larger context of American life.

The 2022 collection entitled “‘It’s Just the Way I Smile,’ You Said” is built upon the core idea of the pleasure of dressing up and clothing. Garments are twisted and reduced to result in a joyful parade of color, shape and movement rooted in the workwear vocabulary of the brand. Classic tropes of American workwear and historical garments are warped: ladylike skirts become contorted around the body, knits become slashed and modified with outsize ruffles, and suiting trousers are cut in silk woven to look like rough workwear linen. The result is a playful mix for anybody and everybody, in the context of a new expression of personal identity.