BIO: Beau Homme is created by George Bunker and Justin Mansfield. Founded in October 2011, Beau Homme designs and produces everyday menswear clothes that delicately challenge prevailing conventions. Bunker was born in Northern Ireland, He moved to America at the age of six. At the age of eighteen, George left to the bright lights of New York City to pursue a career in the Fine Arts. After attending New York University and graduating from School of the Visual Arts, George freelanced at Harper's Bazaar and V Magazine and worked at numerous art galleries. In 2007, he came to study Menswear at London College of fashion, where he met his BEAU HOMME business partner. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean Mansfield pursued his undergraduate studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where he specialised in Graphic Art and Design. He then served as the long-term studio/production manager at J.W.Anderson.
HOMME inaugurates the AW15 season with the collection “INEVITABLE HEROS FORGIVE.” In forgiveness the self is empowered, rather than enabling the past to inform the present. Pain held captive, as though it where a prize to be treasured, must be acknowledged and released for an authentic progression of experience. The fullness of the human experience is revealed through the continual expansion of the heart. Every pitfall,every heartbreak, is an opportunity either to enlarge the heart in the practice of compassion or to debilitate emotional growth by clinging to what is already gone. Forgiveness reclaims our ability for laughter and lightness and saves us from the heavy toll of hatred. It is BEAU HOMME’s hope this collection to serve as a reminder to relinquish yesteryears sorrow to make way for the magnificence of the everyday.
The work of Symbolist artist Odilon Redon acted as an inspirational touchstone throughout the conception and creation of the clothing line. As the symbolists strove to translate the perceived experience into an actualised form, BEAU constructs garments evocative of a merciful essence.
A textile print of an eyeball reimaged as a hot air balloon carries a tender heart away to a divine oblivion where all resentments expire. Armbands, a symbol of mourning, feature throughout the collection. The liberation of pain requires the graceful acknowledgement of the injury incurred.
The armband detail commemorates the ENDURED hardship and sorrow, which has to be properly recognized before recovery can occur. The expected tailoring parameters are challenged in the linking of forms that connect the previously unconnected and re-conceive traditional boundaries.
The citizens of the Western world have been fed a steady stream of veiled propaganda intended to diminish viewers’ sense of worth and self. A deep sense of physical and psychological inadequacy has been ignited across the population with the intent of increased sales. In the failing to live up to the impossible standard of the “desirable”, many have developed a shame-based set of judgements about themselves.
There exists a continual choice to either open or close emotionally and psychologically. Strength of character is marked by the ability to remain open and vulnerable despite unavoidable heartwrenching disappointments. We need to forgive ourselves for not living up to the expectation projected upon ourselves. We need to love hard and stay open. We ask for a little more forgiveness in a world whose standards of worth have been defiled for commercial gain. We ask for the heart to be given up and granted forgiveness.
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