Finally, a new look.
That’s a rarer thought than one might expect during fashion month and it has been particularly rare this season, which has often seemed as uninspiringly familiar as the Trump-Biden retread did while it lasted. But that’s what popped into my head after Jonathan Anderson’s 10th anniversary Loewe show, a tour de force of a collection that mixed it all up to turn convention on its head and challenge all sorts of preconceptions. You think you know what this dressing stuff is all about? the clothes seemed to say. Think again.
You think you know hoop skirts, that most old-fashion and unwieldy of garments? Imagine if you could construct the underpinning like a free-floating wire orbiting the body, and just toss a piece of faded floral gazar on top, so the result had the ease of pajamas and its own anti-gravitational force.
You think a pantsuit is about straight lines and rigor? Imagine the jacket had the flowing sleeves of a Shakespearean shirt (but somehow kept narrow at the shoulder), and then was cut to create a peplum at the hips; the pants given the fulsome ease of a maxi skirt, because there is power in poetry and poetry can be part of the boardroom.
You think a concert T-shirt is kitschy? Imagine that it was made of feathers, with faded portraits of great composers and artist on the top, for all those Mozart and Van Gogh stans heading off to a cocktail party at Lincoln Center before a late night in a mosh pit at Irving Plaza.
Imagine the formal made casual and the casual made formal — and there was more of it, a lot more, including some seemingly prim coat dresses with the hems perma-flipped like they were giving the world the bird. It’s one way to get out of a rut. See the world (and yourself) from a different angle.
Couldn’t everyone use some of that, right about now? It has to start somewhere: The wardrobe may just be the simplest place. It is, after all, the mind-body connection. That’s where desire comes in.
“I just think, there’s no point in showing clothes for clothing’s sake,” Mr. Anderson said afterward, as celebrity acolytes (Daniel Craig, the star of the new Luca Guadagnino film “Queer,” with costumes by Mr. Anderson, and the star of the new Loewe men’s wear campaign; Mr. Craig’s wife, Rachel Weisz; his “Queer” co-star, Drew Starkey) milled around next to a bunch of designer peers who had come to pay their respects: Sabato De Sarno of Gucci; Sarah Burton, newly appointed to Givenchy; Pieter Mulier of Alaïa.
But showing clothes for change’s sake — that’s a different story.
Wearable vs. Genius
And it’s not the same thing as showing them for concept’s sake. That can be awfully engaging to see and no one is better at it than Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons (see her retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017 for proof). Consider her ability to issue statements like “confronting an uncertain world with air and transparency could signify a kind of hope,” and then express that through cumulus clouds of cotton wadding and people-swallowing structures that send the imagination soaring up, up and away, while ignoring certain exigencies like sitting down.
But as a result, conventional industry wisdom has embraced a false dichotomy that suggests there must always be a choice between what is “genius” and what is “wearable”; between the “showpiece,” made just for the photograph and the red carpet, and the “commercial,” made for everyone else; and that never the twain shall meet. The result has been a lot of lazy clothes.
As Nicolas Di Felice said backstage before his terrific Courrèges show, “You see all the time the same images.” He thought maybe, as a comment, he’d show 40 of exactly the same looks, one after the other. But then, he realized, “I’m not that cynical.”
Instead he created 40 variations on a Möbius strip theme, starting with a hooded insectoid cape and then cutting away at it so the curve of the hood was shunted down to become the curve of a cocoon coat, which became the curve of a martingale strap, which turned into a bandeau at the breasts, and so on.
Each piece spoke to the one before and evolved into the one that came after in a way that seemed more like moving forward than being stuck in that endless loop. Also they looked cool.
“What Are You Wearing?”
The ability to combine the structural and the ideological in clothes that makes you want to rise to their occasion is what made Alexander McQueen’s work so extraordinary at the beginning. It’s what Ms. Burton carried forward during her time at the brand, adding to it craft and heart, and it’s what was missing from Seán McGirr’s first collection last season, which was less McQueen than McMeme.
This time around he hewed closer to the heritage, focusing on slick black suits with a twist at the lapels, as though the jackets had been seized by some invisible hands, then cut away here and there to expose the white ruff of the shirt beneath. There were shredded chiffon dresses shot through with silver, a jacket encrusted in gold bullion and a finale dress of silver chains. Though Mr. McGirr’s show notes name-checked Banshee, Mr. McQueen’s second collection, the clothes actually seemed more reminiscent of the Burton era. Either way, it was a step forward, if still too McQueen lite.
“I feel that abnormal clothing is necessary in our everyday life,” Junya Watanabe wrote in his show notes, and it was hard not to think: Bingo.
Abnormal is the new normal, which pretty much sums up the current design challenge. That’s why Mr. Anderson’s Loewe show was so powerful — he made unusual clothes that seemed like exactly what you would want to throw on in the morning — and also why Mr. Watanabe’s stood out.
He made his entire collection out of automotive materials like silver reflector patches, nylon pit wear, even rubber tire treads, all given the couture treatment. That sounds weird (unwearable alert!) but in practice turned out to be not just smart but unexpectedly pretty, especially in a sort of opera puffer cape made from bubbly amalgamations of backpacks; panniers that turned out to be tire sections (they create curves without the crinoline); and an apron dress composed of curvy strips of metallic maybe-insulation that looked like hammered silver sine waves.
Someone should model it on a red carpet soon. When the hackneyed question “What are you wearing?” comes up, just imagine the thrilling conversation that might ensue.
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