It’s been percolating in the zeitgeist for some time now, but this year has sealed the deal: deserts are the fantastical locations du jour. You could certainly call it the Dune effect— kicking into place this year with the release of the Denis Villeneuve-directed film, based on the Frank Herbert novels. Villeneuve’s Dune can be said to be this generation’s must watch sci-fi epic, and with its place in pop culture, the visual imagination of an otherworldly place is not so much a black expanse of space.
Rather, it is the overwhelmingly brown colours of the dunes of Arrakis. The Dune effect has taken hold of fashion for a while now. The leader of the pack is Saint Laurent, which has staged epic catwalk shows in two deserts: Sahara and Agafay.
The current season’s collection is based around the Saharienne safari jacket, which Yves Saint Laurent designed in 1967 taking inspiration from his North African upbringing. Read More Saint Laurent's spring/summer 2024 collection is a nod to female empowerment By Nurul Firdousee But fashion trends move quickly and it would have been easy to dismiss the idea of Dune having that broad a design influence. Except that even luxury watch brands—which have a far longer runway when it comes to design and development—are now getting in on the sandy action.
Gold star: Audemars Piguet’s new sand gold Watchmakers tinker away at micromechanics and the results— even if groundbreaking—are more often than not invisible to the eyes of mo.
