It’s not often that people leave a fashion show flush with desire. It’s not often they leave anywhere these days in such a state. There’s too much flesh available everywhere to really make you ache. But after the Tom Ford show on Wednesday night, you could practically feel the heat rising.
Haider Ackermann’s second dual-gender collection for the house, held in a darkened room with a mirrored floor like a pool over which the models began to prowl, touched a spot that had been left untended for awhile.
Sexy has always been a Tom Ford signature: often garish, always overt. Mr. Ford was, after all, the designer who shaved a G into a model’s pubic hair for an ad campaign when he was at Gucci and made sparkly pasties part of a party dress for his own label. But that kind of brash, naughty exhibitionism has become trite.
When Taylor Swift poses for her newest album in a crystal bra and panties like a burlesque dancer and Sabrina Carpenter gets on her hands and knees for hers; when wearing no pants to the Met Gala is the biggest trend of the night and Lauren Sánchez Bezos dons a lacy corset for the presidential inauguration, that kind of sexy turns into a limp pop culture pose.
It’s why Miguel Castro Freitas’s debut at Mugler could have been such an opportunity. In a season of debuts, this was one of the smaller ones — at this point, the house is largely known for its perfume Angel rather than its clothes, and Mugler doesn’t have the same resonance as other designer-changing brands such as Gucci, Dior or Versace. But Mugler once defined a certain kind of attraction, straddling the line between camp and glamour to offer a singular take on female domination. There was potential to do it again.
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