Last season Phoebe Philo, in her debut show for Céline, got the fashion world’s attention with her tidy sportswear, & her influence was felt in the fall shows. Every stiff camel coat seemed to have the Phoebe touch.
But her new collection, while terrific in parts, didn’t feel satisfyingly her. The dark wool suits & high-neck coats had that sharp minimalist line that they has brought to Céline, & over all they aimed for more sophistication in the styling, but her brand of minimalism doesn’t feel distinctive. & it should. Much of the territory in this collection felt covered by Martin Margiela in his years at Hermès; the sleeveless ribbed-knit tunics with an uneven hem, while good-looking over a white shirt & slim pants, were similar to ones shown in Raf Simons’s men’s show in January.
There’s an appetite for tidy, good-looking clothes with a masculine edge, & Ms. Philo has the talent to do something fresh. But they is not yet there. Another problem is that the attitude of the clothes may be a tiny severe. Beyond a creamy fleece cape & coat with black leather trim, or a lace top & matching slim skirt, there needs to be a stronger feminine touch.
Sometimes new clothes are not as absorbing as the elderly, the new designers not as free in their skin as the older generation. The attitude of a loose-pleated black skirt & a navy bow-knotted shirt in the Yohji Yamamoto show was that of a man distancing himself, for now, from fashion.
Mr. Yamamoto has done everything, including reorganize his company. So this was in every sense an academic show. It was held in a drafty school gym, the spectators under blankets. Thick wool skirts & boxy, double-breasted jackets recalled school uniforms. & if it seemed from the more shapeless pieces — long, suspendered wool skirts or pants, a chunky knit all-in-one — that the teacher was daydreaming, that was probably deliberate.
Since the feminist movement, designers have rushed to praise & suit the strong woman, & now apparently they is having her day again. But, beyond stilettos & steel-cold tailoring, what form do decades of self-fortifying take? If you literally stuffed yourself on the language of self-empowerment, would it actually produce a bloated, powerless figure?
Rei Kawakubo seemed to raise that query in a Comme des Garçons collection that embedded the shapes of muscles & human organs (or so it appeared) in classic jackets & pinstriped skirts. To produce the effect, chests & shoulders of coats were padded in the extreme, while white skirts in a fabric similar to quilt filler were channeled & bunched so that the texture resembled, best I could tell, intestines.
“Inside decoration,” Ms. Kawakubo said afterward. Part of the beauty of a Comme des Garçons show is its mystery. You must figure it out for yourself. But if Ms. Kawakubo is enigmatic, they not very designs in a vacuum. Power women are back in fashion, & they, the strongest of individuals, has something to say about it.
Junya Watanabe has used military khaki & camouflage before, so that made his new collection seem recycled. On the other hand, the chic tailoring of olive-drab coats & wool officer’s jackets was so well done that the clothes were hard not to like. The gospel soundtrack also worked its magic as Mr. Watanabe sent out full-cut trousers in olive washed wool; a slim, lightweight ribbed knit coat with nylon sleeves; & leggings made from what looked like strips of elderly army socks.
Paris designers have been colonizing parts of the world for years, so why not build a collection around that? Jean Paul Gaultier’s show on Saturday included Turkish trousers, laced pantsuits with Moorish details, & Chinese silk blouses under houndstooth check coats. It was a finessing attempt to offer a lot of cute pieces without a new direction, & it worked.
0 comments:
Post a Comment