Margaux Lalanne's graduate collection, The Presence of your Absence, was initially inspired by the theatre as a place possessed by past spirits and past characters. Their physical body is not there anymore, but their memory is still present. Lalanne used this context to question the duality between being present and not being present, being a physical body and not being a physical body. Through her research and developments she attempts to express this duality to evoke not the absence but the presence of someone else.

While Lalanne’s muses were first inspired by personal emotion rather than garments references, she created her own imagery mainly using objects used in set design like chair or sofa, bed sheets or curtains. Through her collection she is playing with contrast: mat and shine, soft draping and traditional tailoring, transparency and opacity. To explore the reciprocity between being visible and being present, the use of layers both 2D and 3D, allows her to create abstract shapes as if they were the shadow or the 'empty space' of another body.




Using an unexpected material like plaster allowed her to distort a soft silk dress. This is the embodiment of a distorted reality, where what we think we see or we know might be always changing as we change our perspective. Making a garment in either slightly or very different fabrics and/or colours was another way to 'collage' this many-dimensions reality we can experience when grieving.

Margaux Lalanne's collection shows her interest for clothes in the context of contemporary fashion but also performance and theatre.