In an industry saturated with filters, angles, and curated cool, Hélas’ Summer 2025 collection arrives like a breath of unpretentious, sun-drenched air. The French skate-rooted label, co-founded by Lucas Puig, Clément Brunel, and Stephen Khou, has long skirted the edge of mainstream streetwear with a confidence that feels effortless rather than manufactured. This season, they’ve chosen to shed even the faintest pretensions of polish. What’s left is something raw, communal, and deeply human: joy without staging, style without the scaffolding of ego.

At the center of their Summer 2025 lookbook is not the garment, but the gesture. Children slurping juice at a picnic table, adults mid-laugh with their mouths still full, a tablecloth slightly stained from the overflow of shared dishes. It’s less a campaign and more a captured memory — a visual diary entry from a long day that spilled into evening, barefoot and sunburnt. It’s a photographic manifesto of clothing that isn’t screaming to be seen but instead coexists quietly with the lives around it.

THE END OF STAGING, THE RETURN OF PRESENCE

There is a growing countercurrent in contemporary fashion: a hunger for images that don’t look like fashion. We’ve seen it bubble up in luxury — from Saint Laurent’s An Ordinary Day campaign with Martin Parr to Acne Studios’ affinity for domestic absurdity. But Hélas approaches it differently. Rather than adopt irony or hyperreal contrast, the brand taps into something gentler: sincerity.

In these images, nothing feels forced. There are no angular poses or gaze-chasing compositions. Instead, there is freedom: a child draped in a too-large cap tee stumbling through the grass, a cousin caught in mid-conversation, sleeves pushed up, gestures animated. The camera lingers not on the cut of a collar or the precision of a hem but on the life that unfolds inside the clothing. And that’s precisely the point.

This isn’t about rejecting aesthetics — Hélas has always been too visually sharp for that — but about rejecting the myth that looking good must come at the expense of comfort, of spontaneity, of joy. The Summer 2025 collection is made to disappear into the moment — breathable button-downs, forgiving shorts, pastel windbreakers, terry polo shirts, and bucket hats that shield without overstatement. They are the kinds of garments that are remembered not for their brand tag but for the day you had while wearing them.

CLOTHING THAT EMBRACES THE UNGUARDED

The best fashion moments often happen in unremarkable places — a backyard, a basketball court, the grocery store. Hélas understands this intuitively. Their clothes don’t demand a marble-floored penthouse or a moodboard beachscape. They belong in sun-scorched parking lots and plastic folding chairs.

This season’s palette leans into that softness: dusty yellows, washy blues, earthy pinks — the kind of tones that feel like they’ve already lived through a summer. Fabrics are tactile without being precious: cottons that wrinkle, jerseys that stretch, canvas that frays. Aesthetic decisions are practical ones — because, for Hélas, design is less about presentation and more about how clothing interacts with the body over time. The collection celebrates the inevitability of creases, the badge of sweat, the joy of a stain you earned.

There’s an intimacy in that honesty. One can’t help but be reminded of brands like Noah or Story mfg., who’ve each, in their own way, redefined cool by prioritizing ethics, warmth, and imperfection. Yet Hélas doesn’t chase those philosophies so much as arrive at them through instinct. Their clothing isn’t eco-anxious or didactic; it’s quietly responsible, made to last, and too busy living to lecture.

THE TABLE AS RUNWAY

What’s most radical about the Hélas Summer 2025 lookbook isn’t what’s worn — it’s where and how it’s worn. The entire shoot centers around a long outdoor table, surrounded by friends and family in what appears to be a sunlit garden or provincial backyard. There are no moodboards, no props, no artifice — only evidence of a meal in progress: fruit bowls, sweat rings, discarded utensils, crumbs. It’s the kind of place fashion rarely lingers. But Hélas lingers — and in doing so, reorients our understanding of style.

Here, the table becomes the runway. Not in the metaphorical sense of spectacle, but in the literal sense of movement. People shift chairs. They reach across. They lean in and rise up and spill things. Clothes stretch and twist and get tugged by children. Buttons are undone. Hats are swapped. This is clothing in action, and it is more powerful than any static studio shot.

There’s also a strong generational undercurrent. In an industry often obsessed with youth, Hélas includes uncles, toddlers, friends from varying walks of life — each one dressed in ways that suggest shared wardrobes, not styled roles. It’s a reminder that streetwear doesn’t belong to an age group. It belongs to a spirit — one that is open, kinetic, and slightly mischievous.

ESCAPING THE ECONOMY OF COOL

Perhaps most refreshing is Hélas’ refusal to compete in the traditional economy of cool. The brand isn’t trying to one-up anyone or reinvent silhouettes. Their evolution is emotional, not aesthetic. With each season, they’ve quietly refined their offerings without losing the irreverence that made them skate darlings to begin with.

In Summer 2025, this irreverence manifests not in logos or slogans but in mood. The brand’s attitude is no longer “look at me,” but “come sit with us.” There’s no clout to be gained from these photos, only warmth. And in that warmth lies a deeper kind of status — one based not on exclusivity but on relatability.

It’s a shift reflective of a broader cultural fatigue. As consumers become more skeptical of influencers and trend cycles, authenticity — real, messy, mundane authenticity — becomes aspirational. Hélas captures this mood with a disarming grace. The campaign doesn’t preach, posture, or perform. It simply extends a hand, passing you a dish, pulling out a chair.

ROOTED IN FRENCH STREET CULTURE

Of course, none of this should be read as accidental. Hélas’ sensibility is grounded in a very specific corner of French street culture — one shaped by skateboarding, Mediterranean summer rituals, and a winking relationship with preppy aesthetics. Their iconic umbrella logo, reminiscent of a gentleman’s cane, hints at the brand’s humor and duality: a brand as comfortable in technical tracksuits as it is in vintage Lacoste nods.

This tension — between sport and leisure, elegance and irreverence — threads through every garment they release. The Summer 2025 collection may feel casual, but it’s as carefully constructed as any high-end capsule. Cuts are exact. Embroidery is deliberate. The fit remains king. It’s just that now, the fit is meant to be forgotten — not because it isn’t beautiful, but because it lets the wearer be fully present.

There is immense design maturity in that restraint. As trends bend toward maximalism or digital gimmickry, Hélas turns inward — designing not for the next viral moment but for the next real one.

THE CLOTHES YOU REMEMBER

In the end, the Hélas Summer 2025 collection isn’t about revolution. It’s about resonance. These are the clothes you didn’t think twice about packing for a trip. The shorts you wore every weekend. The shirt that still smelled like sunscreen when you unpacked it in September. The kind of pieces that become part of your life’s photo album without ever having posed for it.

There’s something radical about that, too. In a fashion climate that often prizes appearance over experience, Hélas has chosen to prioritize life itself. To make clothes not for content, but for context. To celebrate a kind of unpolished happiness that doesn’t sell itself — it simply exists.

It’s easy to overlook collections like these in an industry obsessed with spectacle. But to do so would be to miss the quiet brilliance of Hélas’ proposition: that fashion doesn’t need to shout to matter. That the best clothes aren’t the ones that demand attention, but the ones that let us forget we’re wearing them — because we’re too busy living.

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