Ava Gruft Fall/Winter 2024
Ava Gruft
Vancouver Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024
By Danica Samuel | May 13, 2024
Photography by Arun Nevader
Video by Vancouver Fashion Week and Global Fashion Collective
The debut collection of Vancouver-born designer Ava Gruft was a diary of a former lingerie factory worker inspired to bring intimacy in every attire. The captivating Fall/Winter 2024 collection emanated fierce expressions of femme with nightlife-centric elements—all vivaciously sculpting the body with flowing lines. It was teasing, flirtatious and seductively polished.
The themed silver and metallic accents combined with the Valenciennes lace and spray-painted floral patterns set the tone of a domineering, sultry vibe. There were looks in clingy bustiers, fitted bralettes, and pants seductively sliced with princess seams—held together with 120 sets of corset hooks. The heavily slit all-over leather skirt with top stitching was especially enticing (look 10).
But the tattered, deconstructed tailoring blended with delicate materials and unconventional mediums seemingly gave the finger to corporate attire. Gruft’s use of spray painting lace onto silk charmeuse and applying garter belts to tailored suits kept a desire for more intricate renditions of the studious attires we know of—placing them in the world of intimates. The two stand out suits both comprised of the lingerie anatomy and the continuity of Gruft’s buckled straps throughout. Her black tailored wool suit (look 8), decorated in metallic silver plastisol ink graphics, appears to be a reoccurring rendition of Gruft’s trompe l’oeil aesthetic. The details perfectly situate from the lapel to the side seams of the wide-legged trousers—fulfilling an equilibrium.
But it was the first look of the evening where Gruft showed her alt ingenuity. Model Eva Celeste van der Woerd Barrientos wore a spray-painted lace, silk charmeuse bralette paired with a bias-cut panelled slip skirt and knife-pleated wool skirt. The romantic and delicately embellished creation was accented with the collection’s themed buckled belt at the waistband—setting the tone for Gruft’s veering away from traditionalism.
Every detail counted in the showcase and was a testament to the designer’s calibre of creations: the coated denim opera gloves and printed archival lace tights— the result of a 2-year project collecting vintage and dead stock lace, scanning and digitizing them into a printed design. We witnessed a masterpiece of boundary-pushing silhouettes that juxtapose couture-level tailoring with lingerie-inspired deconstruction. It was our first introduction to the world of Ava Gruft— a place of sensual asymmetric layering and unconventional forms. Gruft’s trajectory is evident, and continuous breaking of style conventions is undoubtedly on the horizon for the new label.
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