Skaters, Samurais, and Club Kids: Backstage at Tim Coppens Spring 2017

Last month, buzzy Belgian designer Tim Coppens picked up a new side gig: He’s now also executive creative director of Under Armour, which made it slightly less surprising that the brand’s logo showed up on the runway at his namesake label’s spring 2017 at New York Fashion Week: Men’s on Tuesday. For Coppens, though, the feature wasn’t entirely product placement, but another reference to one of his enduring influences: Youth culture. “In Berlin and Burkheim, they wear Under Armour to the club underneath [their clothes],” he said backstage. (Believable enough for the compression shirts that showed up on the runway – a bit less so for the sporty sunglasses slung backwards around models‘s necks.) In any case, there were plenty other references to be had: Coppens’s cast of mop-headed boys also paid homage to the designer’s days as a skater, and even his appreciation for Japan, represented in hanging judo-like belts and abstracted images of Mount Fuji. See it all up-close behind the scenes, here.