I thought it was an interesting article. I completely agree with Ms. Horyn's view on London fashion these days, it's exactly how I have felt for the past several years.
Mad About London
LONDON
IT’S an old, old story: the coming of a new, new age of British
fashion. Ten years ago the madmen of genius were Alexander McQueen and
Hussein Chalayan, whose shows roused intense feelings and alone made
the trip to this city worth it. In 2000, the year of the landmark young
British artists exhibition at the Royal Academy, Mr. McQueen staged a
show in an asylumlike glass cube, and Mr. Chalayan projected a video of
dolls, which was a foretelling of a bobbleheaded celebrity culture.
“We had a fire in our gut,” Mr. Chalayan recalled the other day in
his East London studio, where he was finishing the collection he will
present on Oct. 4 in Paris, a show that will take a serious step toward
using microchip technology to influence how we see clothes and the body.
Now there is buzz for a new group of British designers, nearly all
in their mid-20’s and successfully elevated in the news media even
before some had their first professional show. They include Christopher
Kane, Richard Nicoll, Gareth Pugh, Marios Schwab, Danielle Scutt and
Roksanda Ilincic. Todd Lynn, 38, who had his first show last week, was
for seven years an assistant to Roland Mouret and separately made tour
clothes for rock stars like Bono and Marilyn Manson.
Lured in part by a megashow by Giorgio Armani
on Thursday night at Earl’s Court, Patrick McCarthy, the editorial
director of W and Women’s Wear Daily, said it was his first trip to the
London collections in 10 years. “I’m eager to see the young designers,
especially Giles Deacon,” he explained as he waited outside in the late
English summer for Mr. Kane’s show to start. By virtue of his polished
talent as well as his genial nature, Mr. Deacon, 36, has apparently
earned the right, at least in London’s cozy world of fashion and the
news media, to have his name reduced to Giles. “I think it was McQueen
who said that the spotlight falls on London every 10 years,” Mr. Deacon
said in his Victorian-era studio, with its many windows and its high
ceiling. A model, being fitted for a black silk satin mini-dress and a
Darth Vader helmet of black feathers, stalked past, fringe flying. Mr.
Deacon said he felt London was again having such a moment, in part
because of the interest from recent design school graduates in sexy
dress-up clothes. “It’s about design and quality and ideas,” he said.
Yet, despite very good collections for spring 2007 by Mr. Deacon,
Mr. Pugh and Mr. Lynn, and promising starts by Mr. Kane, Mr. Schwab and
Ms. Scutt, a lot has happened in the last 10 years to make you wonder
if the latest London revival isn’t just a case of wishful thinking.
“There’s buzz,” said Michael Fink, the fashion director of Saks Fifth
Avenue, “but I’m not sure there’s a payoff.”
Jane Shepherdson, the brand director at Topshop, which sponsors many
of the young designer shows — and benefits enormously from that hip
association — agreed. “There’s real hype and a lot that disappoints, to
be honest,” she said. Part of the problem, as Ms. Shepherdson would
readily acknowledge, is that celebrities have supplanted designers as
tastemakers.
Last week, Topshop announced that Kate Moss — who is featured in
fall advertising campaigns for Dior, Burberry and others — would design
her own line for the chain, eternally cool with young women.
This is more than another instance of celebrity mongering. “No girl
in this country moves until she has seen what Kate Moss is wearing when
she steps out of her house,” said Sarah Mower, a London-based writer
for American Vogue and Style.com.
“She’s different. She puts on a man’s vest, and it’s on everyone else.”
Aware of her influence even as she seems indifferent to it, Ms. Moss
proposed the line to Topshop, according to Ms. Shepherdson. It will be
available next April. (The chain hopes to open its first American
branch in New York next year.)
Another cultural change is the power of digital technology to make tastemakers of virtually anyone, via blogs and sites like MySpace.com.
An article in the current issue of Pop magazine suggests the vicious
speed and shallowness of the era. Describing the London club scene,
Paul Flynn writes: “It’s all about Saturday jobs and snagged tights and
staying over where you can find a pillow. It’s about A-levels and heels
and disposable tunes that will never make it beyond the wire by bands
that you will probably never get to hear of. It operates beyond the
music industry and P.R.”
And beyond establishment fashion. While waiting outside Mr. Deacon’s
show, Natalie Massenet, the chief executive of the online boutique
Net-a-Porter, tried to suggest to Mr. McCarthy, her former boss, that
front-row journalists like himself would have less and less influence
in the future as consumers exerted their own right to vote. Mr.
McCarthy was not buying her argument, at least not completely.
“Everybody can have an opinion,” he said.
Of course, that just makes it harder for London, a city with a long,
delicious history of fashion anarchy, to achieve any sense of
authority. “I feel tremendously disloyal for saying this,” said Camilla
Morton, a British fashion journalist, “but we’re good at the after-show
party clothes and not the runway.”
The best of the young designer collections identified some patterns
that may bear watching. Mr. Kane, who grew up in Scotland with two
older sisters who love fashion, showed stretch mini-dresses with
bandage-like wrapping and insets of lace, often in Day-Glo pinks and
orange. “I love color,” Mr. Kane said. “And so why not?” Recently hired
by Versace as a freelance consultant, Mr. Kane said he wants to move
beyond camp frills while keeping his clothes sexy. “I want that
fierceness, and I think it’s totally achievable in tailoring,” he said.
MR. Lynn and Mr. Schwab are already focused on sharp tailoring, Mr. Lynn in a post-Helmut Lang
minimalist vein with men’s suits in wool and satin sized for women, and
Mr. Schwab with dresses that display an understanding of fit. Ms.
Scutt, who is feisty and adorable, could not have chosen two better
style mentors than Claire McCardell and Rudi Gernreich, who inspired
her fabulous semitopless black bathing suit with a wide patent-leather
belt. Ms. Scutt also likes the girly 1980’s.
So, unlike their American counterparts, this generation of British
designers is frankly interested in mean, sexy clothes. Mr. Kane, for
his part, said he was influenced a little bit by the up-and-out style
of celebrities. And why not?
Ms. Ilincic didn’t suggest a new direction, but the way she worked
with historical shapes and fabrics like brocade and tweed was fresh.
The rounded, bustle bottoms and peaks of creamy tulle under curving
jacket hems were also sexy.
Whether or not the cranelike Mr. Pugh qualifies as a bona fide
madman, he does seem to think like an artist, creating sculptures and
installations rather than clothes. His 12-outfit collection included
harlequin- checked dresses and coats assembled from squares of patent
shoe leather and insulating fabric. He used double-sided tape to hold
some of the garments together, though you wouldn’t know it from the
quality of finished results, and a black oversize cardigan was knitted
from strips of garbage bags.
Mr. Pugh, who is 25, has never produced a garment for sale, and
hasn’t so far minded. But he said on Thursday that he is working with
the studio of the designer Rick Owens in Paris to reproduce the current
collection as well as styles from his previous three collections.
What Mr. Deacon — Giles — brings to fashion is unique among the new
generation of British designers: a lightness of hand and spirit that,
while utterly sophisticated, feels grounded in contemporary life. As
Mr. Deacon pointed out, with some pride, he and his friends travel by
bicycle and subway. They’re not viewing the world through the tinted
windows of Lincoln Town Cars.
In his collection there were lovely white silk dresses in an
overscaled chain print, including one based on a caftan; a short,
whirling black evening cape with a high dog collar; and mini-dresses
with a stiff, subversive hem of curling black plastic. His standout
number, which showed his ability to cut and perfect a pattern, was a
long black shirtwaist dress with a yoke of black plastic and many tiers
of crisply pleated silk. You didn’t know whether to thank Mainbocher or
Scarlett O’Hara. It was a beaut’.
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