A lot has changed for CDLM’s Chris Peters in the last year. For one, he’s joined the Puppets and Puppets team (the spring 2024 collection was the first one he worked on alongside Carly Mark), but even more importantly, he’s begun a meditation practice. “I never really understood what meditation did, but it’s given me such a sense of who I am and being really present in the moment,” he said recently. “On top of that, it made me feel more a part of the universe than I ever have; I feel more complete in the way that I live and the way that I act and the way I make things. A lot of the clothing is sort of an extension of this process that’s given me the confidence and clarity to execute ideas that would’ve been a little overwhelming or kind of scary previously.”
Taking his words literally, there was indeed a sense of interconnectedness evident in this collection. A vintage fur stole that used to belong to Peters’s grandmother was attached to a bunch of vintage cotton t-shirts to create a snood of sorts that could work as both a top and an accessory. Another piece featured a group of vintage t-shirts and sweatshirts daisy-chained together with leather straps; the resulting garment also had infinite possibilities. Elsewhere, a simple jersey tank had an undulating cutout across the rib cage and was shown over a vintage embroidered gown that was draped over the shoulder, its bottom half pulled through the slit.
“I have a lot of dresses that have super-serious dry rot so you can’t wear them,” Peters said of the vast archive of vintage clothes that form the basis of most of his collections. “I thought it would be cool to create a garment that had a structure in it so that you could wear garments as a ‘garland’ or as a decorative element.” The designer has always been fond of exploring the full physicality of his materials and the possibilities of “wearing” something (the fantastic way he “stuffed” fabric and feathers under mesh tanks for his spring 2022 collection comes to mind), but such experiments are never at the expense of beauty or desirability. To wit: a minimal jacket with a zip-front and zip details at the hip that was completely covered in gesso; its torn edges both beautiful and satisfying, proof of the human hand that made it all possible. Or the long jersey t-shirt dress worn with—or should it be worn through?—the wide waistband of a pair of white wide legged trousers. Its ease gave way to an unimpeachable elegance.
Elegance, in fact, may be the best word for Peters’s latest offering. It was there in the crisp mid-length jacket in a white nylon fabric with black fur cuffs and a bronze ceramic brooch affixed at the chest (courtesy of his partner Shane Gabier); and it was certainly there in the white lace dress put together with pieces of intricately beaded fabric in gradient shades of gray to white. “I would say this piece is definitely representative of this collection,” he noted, describing the process of making it, which included taking apart a beaded jacket (that also used to belong to his grandmother), and re-working and re-beading parts of it, as a meditation in itself.
“I make work really just because it helps me think, and it really is a cathartic thing for me to do,” he said. “I’m at Puppets during the day, so I go home from making clothes to make more clothes at night. My daytime work clothes versus my wind-down clothes.”
