It is the afternoon of 25 June 2003. We are in Milan.

It is very hot. You can feel the humidity on your skin and in the air. Summer has only just begun and, along the Naviglio Grande, something strange is beginning to appear.

A body is floating on the water. It drifts helplessly, carrying with it the seaweed and small bits of rubbish floating on the surface of the canal. Someone stops at the edge of the Naviglio and watches it. Someone shouts. Others, however, do not seem frightened. They stand motionless, astonished, but they know what is happening.

After that first body, another appears. This one, too, is motionless. It is the body of a man, with his legs spread apart and his arms outstretched, at the mercy of the current.

Then another arrives. And yet another.

A procession of motionless bodies slowly crosses the Naviglio. There are about seventeen people: seventeen wet bodies drifting past the incredulous eyes of those on the banks. Some have come to watch a fashion show. Others, however, have already alerted the police.

What they are witnessing is Mainstream Downstream, the presentation of Carol Christian Poell’s Spring/Summer 2004 collection.

Poell is an Austrian fashion designer, born in 1966 into a family with a long history in fashion and leatherwork. After completing his training, he moved to Milan, where he studied fashion design and began to develop his own work.

The fashion show we are talking about is one that many may not remember or may never have heard of. Yet, even today, it continues to resurface online, often accompanied by interpretations that differ greatly from its original meaning.

In recent years, for example, themes such as pollution, overproduction and the human body’s encroachment on nature have been associated with the project. These are possible interpretations, especially when looking at those images today. But Poell’s starting point was quite different.

To understand this, we must start with the title.

Mainstream Downstream encapsulates the entire contradiction of the project. The word ‘stream’ literally refers to a flow, a current, a watercourse. Mainstream, however, also refers to what belongs to the dominant current: that which is popular, commercial, widely shared and followed by the majority.

Poell pairs this word with ‘downstream’, which means moving downstream, allowing oneself to be carried along in the direction of the current.

The project therefore plays on a double meaning. On the one hand, there is the actual current of the Naviglio, which physically carries the models along. On the other, there is the current of fashion, trends and the market, capable of pushing everyone in the same direction.

The point is not simply to deny the existence of trends. It is to try to escape their automatic repetition, transforming them into something personal. To ask oneself, in other words, what happens to fashion when everyone starts following the same current.

This is yet another reason why Mainstream Downstream goes against all the principles of a traditional fashion show.

The models do not walk. They do not control their own bodies, they do not set the pace, and they do not interpret the garments through movement. They are motionless and move forward solely because the water carries them.

The water is not merely part of the set design. It is a fundamental element of the project, because it has a direct effect on the clothes. The fabrics become saturated, grow heavier, cling to the body or lose their original shape. Leather, rubber and other materials react to being submerged. The environment tangibly alters the collection.

The Naviglio thus becomes an integral part of the design.

After the presentation, a journalist reportedly asked Poell what would happen to those garments. Would they be thrown away? Would they become unusable?

His reply was very simple:

They will dry.

It is a reply that perfectly captures the essence of the project. There is no desire to protect the garment, to keep it intact or to present it in its ideal form. The garment may get wet, dirty, heavy and transformed. Then, quite simply, it will dry.

We are therefore faced with a collection in which the physical dimension is fundamental. It is not merely a visual spectacle, but an experience that also involves heat, humidity, smells and discomfort.

Today we are used to seeing fashion shows staged within spectacular settings, with artificial landscapes and sets designed to astonish the audience. In this case, however, Poell does not construct a fictional environment. He places fashion within a real location and allows that location to act directly upon the bodies and the clothes.

The Naviglio had not been cleaned for the occasion. The water was dirty and foul-smelling. The heat and humidity were stifling. The algae, debris and foul odour were not mishaps to be concealed, but became part of the experience.

Even the smell, in a way, forms part of the project.

The collection was built primarily around the contrast between white and orange. There were white trench coats, chest bands, very close-fitting tailored trousers, jackets structured at the shoulders, knitwear and large orange tights. There were also appliqués.

Yet, during the show, it was almost impossible to actually see the garments in their entirety.

The models floated thanks to structures concealed beneath their bodies, which allowed them to remain on the surface of the water. However, their position, the distance from the banks and the movement of the Naviglio prevented the audience from viewing the clothes in the way one would normally view a collection.

This is another key element.

A fashion show is supposed to showcase the clothes. Poell, however, creates a presentation in which the clothes cannot be viewed in their entirety. The spectacular staging ultimately hinders the commercial function of the catwalk.

The model does not accompany the garment. They do not enhance it through their gait or posture. They simply let themselves be carried along.

The show thus has its own flow, with a beginning and an end, but the movement is not generated by the people. It is nature, through the water, that determines the speed and direction.

At the end of the route, the models are retrieved, pulled out of the Naviglio and dried. The garments are also left to dry and, in the days that follow, are displayed in the Milan showroom, still bearing the marks of their encounter with the water.

Looking at the images, many will inevitably think of Ophelia, the famous painting by John Everett Millais

The visual reference is immediate: a body lying on the water, suspended in a state that is difficult to interpret, halfway between sleep and death. It is an image that belongs to our collective imagination and which resurfaces almost automatically when we see those floating bodies.

We do not know whether they are alive or dead. We know that they offer no resistance. They are completely exposed to the environment and its forces.

It is precisely this loss of control that makes Mainstream Downstream so powerful.

The garment loses its original shape. The model loses control of her movements. The designer himself relinquishes, at least in part, any precise control over how the collection will be presented. Everything is surrendered to an element as unstable, dirty and unpredictable as the water of the Naviglio.

It was not the first time Poell had staged such an extreme presentation.

A few years earlier, in 2000, he had created ‘Best Before’, a project in which he used stretchers and very long, loose-fitting trousers, reminiscent of body bags. In that instance too, the show bore no resemblance to a traditional catwalk. The models were placed within the setting of a kennel, amidst animals, noises and smells.

Poell had already transformed the fashion show into a physical experience – one that was unsettling and difficult to consume passively. He did not simply ask the audience to look at clothes. He forced them to confront the body, its vulnerability, and environments that the fashion world would normally seek to keep at bay.

I wanted to talk about this project because Mainstream Downstream is not simply about putting fashion in water.

Poell subverts two of the fundamental elements of the fashion show: the body and the garment.

The body no longer walks, but is carried along. The garment does not retain its shape, but is altered by its surroundings. Both lose control of their own direction.

In the early 2000s, fashion was increasingly celebrating speed, novelty, desire and the constant succession of trends. Poell, on the other hand, presented motionless bodies, moving at a slow, almost funeral-like pace.

His was a form of fashion that could only move forward because it was carried along by the current.

And it is perhaps precisely in this contradiction that the project’s deepest meaning lies. The current creates movement and sets a direction, but at the same time alters and distorts what human beings had designed.

The garments start out with a precise shape, but the water transforms them. The bodies set off from a point, but do not decide where to go. Fashion continues to move, but it is no longer clear who is controlling its course.

More than twenty years on, ‘Mainstream Downstream’ remains perhaps one of the most interesting presentations ever created. Not only because of the power of its images, but because it reflects on the risk one runs when letting oneself be carried along by the current.