Thirdly: the title perfectly embodies the definition of mechanisms behind fashion. "Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers." Szulc plays with this saying and steps into the river, at the same time halting its current.
Such is also fashion's way: it pretends that it stops the passing of time and visits different historical periods, drawing inspiration from them. Szulc also pursues that process, although he usually revisits the history of his own brand. His SS 2015 collection titled The Past is filled with quotations from his own work: distorted, reversed, reconfigured. In Hold the Rivers, we will find his favourite oversize, but also tight trapeze dresses, wool jackets, and leggings. As a whole, it is generally quite dark – one is tempted to seek connections with the ingenious ironic author Witold Gombrowicz and Michał Markowski's book about him titled Czarny nurt (The Black Current). There are ripped fabrics, a lot of layering, irregularities – just like in a ripping river current. The colours are dark and shift from one darkness to another, just like reflections on the water's surface. This kind of colour subtlety and attentiveness permeates all of Szulc's collections – as in, for instance, Boom Boom Baltic (SS 2012), whose palette was based on the colours of the Polish seaside. In Hold the Rivers, Szulc deliberately stuck to black and monochrome.
Colours are in again, and I don't like to follow the trends. When they weren't fashionable, I often used to pick a colour which I disliked and kept working with it until I had a ready collection.
At the end of the Hold the Rivers show, which presented an uncanny, sexy collection, models stood still in sunglasses, bathed in artificial light. It was hard not to think about the 80s hit: "I wear my sunglasses at night So I can, So I can, Keep track of the visions in my eyes."