EcoLux☆Lifestyle: ‘Laurence & Chico’ Avant Garde Trunk Show to Overtake Leisure Center

BE PREPARED VANCOUVER! Laurence & Chico will descend on Leisure Center on Howe Street and will present a collection of 150 ready-to-wear pieces, 20 pieces of accessories, as well as various furniture pieces in its 3-day hometown début trunk show from March 16-18th.

Leisure Center has become a prominent space in Vancouver’s social canvas and a growing part of its cultural identity since their launch this past November with an interesting event that celebrated the diversity within the west coast urban lifestyle. The follow-up fashion even ‘Music of Fall’ saw the concrete floor buried in mounds of autumn leaves, months before the Chanel RTW 2018 shows!

The collaborative presentation will combine avant-grade display installations and model presentation that will create a visually stunning and unprecedented unique experience to celebrate Vancouver’s vigorous development in fashion and design.

Laurence & Chico was born at a stall in Soho across the street from the Miu Miu store. There stood ECUAD-trained illustrator Laurence Li, who, on the advice of his then Parsons classmate and accomplished fashion designer Chico, was selling postcards featuring the same caricatures that would later be brought to life in Laurence & Chico’s first apparel collections.

The founders of Leisure Center were their early patrons, agreeing to stock their first pieces before they had formally registered their brand. The collection prepared for this trunk show is a robust and vivid evolution from Laurence & Chico’s early designs without losing any of the whimsicality and attention to detail.

“Leisure Center’s categorization-defying platform and their philosophy of promoting forward-thinking ideas resonated with the spirit of our creative process,” Laurence said about their choice of venue for their global trunk show premiere.

A glance through Laurence & Chico’s past collections is a revelation for both fashion connoisseurs and casual art lovers. Their creative process is a kind of reverse-engineering of fashion illustration. Laurence, the illustrator and muse, draws surreal and kaleidoscopic images that reflect the world around him. Each drawing contributes to a story filled with playful symbolism. Chico then brings the sketches and palettes to life on cups, t-shirts, dresses, accessories and furniture.

At the trunk show, visitors will witness as the line is blurred between pets and their owners. Exuberantly outsize dresses and hats are adorned with striking cascades of pearls and ruffles, as well as endearing commands of “GROOM ME” and “PET ME.” With painstaking attention to detail, each outfit recalls, through its silhouette, material, palette, the impression of a chic, happily pampered pet.

Laurence and Chico are quick to mention that their designs extend far beyond apparel. This is apparent in their latest furniture and café concepts, which serve as backdrops and complements to form a tableau of their lifestyle vision. They have designed modular furniture which serve as mannequins for covers that will be featured in every future collection. All of their furniture designs will be featured on the day of the trunk show as well.

Following its mission to be a patron of the arts both local and global, Leisure Center sees it as a fitting bellwether for an exciting line-up of visually and conceptually stimulating events planned for the rest of the year.

For Laurence & Chico, this trunk show is a joyous homecoming that brings their surrealist couture to an audience starved for avant-garde fashion.

Images provided by Leisure Center.