LEBLANCSTUDIOS SS27: ‘Grit and Grace’ Confronts Adapting to the System
The collection brings softness and femininity to military archival clothing.
Photography by Rochelle Marie Adam
Since Yamil Arbaje and Angelo Beato started LEBLANCSTUDIOS in 2014, they’ve always incorporated their Dominican heritage throughout their collections. For SS27, Grit and Grace taps into the idea of vulnerability as a form of resilience and resistance—their third collection to explore different forms of vulnerability.
They show that vulnerability and resilience through military archival clothing. Garments interpreted as tough and nearly indestructible are transformed into soft, feminine silhouettes. Grit and Grace introduces military-inspired drapery, pleats, mohair, wool, cotton, and elevated everyday essentials.
LEBLANCSTUDIOS reconstructs a military shirt into a fitted top with a draped, pleated knot at the front. A bomber jacket goes contemporary with a twist: pleats, deep pockets, balloon sleeves, and frontal detail reminiscent of a bayonet. A military henley is revamped in ultrafine merino wool, with patterning that resembles a Dominican chacabana. A peacoat is wrapped in mohair. Barrel jeans are dyed with a distressed, green finish and light stitching. A relaxed blazer becomes unconventional as it opens in the back.
Photography by Rochelle Marie Adam
“These gestures change the way authority sits on the body,” Beato and Arbaje say. “The clothes carry the language of protection, but they are not meant to behave as structured or like armor on the body. Power becomes quieter: something found in posture, restraint, solitude, and the ability to endure without becoming hard.”
Caribbeans, both on the islands and the mainland, have a tumultuous, rich history. Grit and Grace raises the question: “How do you maintain your identity, culture, and resilience within a society or system that is constantly evolving—forcing you to adapt?” Rochelle Marie Adam tells this story through the subjects’ expressions throughout the collection: irony, vulnerability, distance, and grace.
“We understand the Caribbean as a condition of living, shaped by movement, instability, improvisation, intimacy, contradiction, and endurance, they say. “It means knowing how to make something from what is available, while keeping something of yourself private.”
To understand that Caribbean identity, LEBLANCSTUDIOS lets wearers be fully human without explaining themselves in military garments that have become dehumanized and desensitized. That humanization of Grit and Grace allows for complexity and unreadability, without always having to adapt or evolve within constantly changing systems.
