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  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    S/S 08 Menswear Press Reviews




    I thought this would be a good thread to compile reviews of the S/S 08 Menswear shows. Here's one by Suzy Menkes. She liked Raf Simons [|-)]



    Millefeuille! A thousand ways with layers





    Sunday, July 1, 2007








    There is only one
    way to cook up a fashion show this season and that is with different
    layers. The mille-feuille approach - a thousand ways to arrange
    wafer-thin slices - is the overwhelming theme of summer 2008.





    The recipe is to take sheer sweaters and layer them over shirts that
    are themselves half transparent or to have translucent nylon jackets
    interact with misty voile tops.





    At Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo called the
    layered look "super-impositions" and the idea was used to show not just
    one, but three jackets at once, in varying lengths, so that they lapped
    over one another. They were mostly used for shorts suits.





    It was a cute idea - especially when checked and striped fabrics
    created an insouciant mix above the calf-length socks and some
    inexplicable Comme tribal symbol painted on the calves. But this was,
    uncharacteristically for Kawakubo, a one-trick pony. There were just
    minor variations: low-crotch shorts, cardigans or layered shirts.





    The mix-and-match then took a surreal turn with frantic layering of
    graphic patterns. Occasionally one of these layering looks came off
    beautifully, as in different colors of madras checks. But you couldn't
    help feeling that once in the male closet, those jackets would be worn
    one at a time.





    The stand-out show came from Raf Simons because the
    Belgian designer did not just work layers as an aesthetic idea. It was
    part of a thoughtful concept about exploring the wide world - not just
    the World Wide Web.





    "It feels free," said Simons. "People so encapsulate themselves and
    only inform themselves on the computer. It is a safe environment
    without risks, but there is a need to get out."





    The designer's philosophical vision was equally a practical one. The
    clothes he sent out took risks, with tunics layered like dresses, but
    resolutely masculine, shown with sporty, colorful sandals and boots and
    with the giant backpacks that symbolized explorative travel and gave
    solidity to the silhouette.





    Everything seemed fresh and different: shorts cut loose with a
    double layer that could be in an unlikely fabric like taffeta.
    "Material world" was printed in faded letters on the tunics and shorts
    that opened the show. That, too, had a double meaning: a deep
    exploration of fabrics from nylon to cotton and being in touch with the
    diverse universe. Another inventive idea was drawstrings to create
    silhouettes, puckered to shape the waist or pulled in at the knees.
    Strong, mannish colors from pine green to ink blue were interspersed
    with orange and yellow to give a frisson of multiethnicity. After
    recent collections of precise tailoring, Raf Simons as fashion explorer
    was a fresh departure.





    The art of fashion is to make things look like they were meant to be. But at Yves Saint Laurent,
    the designer Stefano Pilati tackled art with a capital "A," as both he
    and his models wore shoes splattered with paint to walk a canvas
    runway. This Jackson Pollock wannabe look also appeared on shorts and
    pants and an artsy jacket had inserts of crude and chaotic patchwork.





    The silhouettes were dedicated to "workwear," meaning roomy
    painter's smock shapes and short, boxy jackets. The alternative was the
    loose sweaters curving up at the front. In this fashion comfort zone,
    nothing was fitted to the body, sometimes suggesting laid-back
    sophistication but not designed for seduction. But Pilati has decided
    to pitch an intellectual/arty look for YSL - and on that basis he
    succeeded.





    Art was a pitfall for Viktor & Rolf , whose
    David Hockney-inspired collection did not make "a bigger splash" with
    its feeble print of swimming pool ripples on a shirt or its puerile
    schoolboy jackets with an outline like varsity braiding. Such themes
    have to be as deeply felt as Hockney's original work was, expressing
    the lapping warmth of the West Coast and its sexual freedom, to be
    anything other than a fashion gimmick.





    When Ann Demeulemeester opened her show with a
    Marcel Duchamp interview on the soundtrack and with DaDa printed across
    the chest, the heart sank. Not another designer influenced by last
    year's DaDa exhibition! But the Belgian designer used the inspiration
    to turn her own nonconformist approach onto an intriguing riff on
    layers. And it worked beautifully.





    Translating her poetic vision, Demeulemeester's inserted graphic
    deck chair stripes in black and white or fiery red to show an
    ultra-long shirt flowing from under a shorter T-shirt with a
    thigh-length jacket as the top layer. Cardigans partnering the jackets,
    a pin-wheel brooch on a lapel and soft pants with a narrow cuff all
    made for easy but stylish summer wear.





    At Hermès, the whisper-quiet luxury was a touch
    dull since blouson jackets with rich colors and textures - a zingy lime
    green or russet suede - were too much the focus. A raincoat with a
    dropped belt and V-necked sweaters, often with sheer stripes, were
    other sartorial alternatives. But the designer Véronique Nichanian
    understands that the essence of Hermès is supreme luxury and from an
    ultrafine sweater to short-sleeved shirts in necktie-patterned voile,
    she never betrayed that heritage, yet made a casual, summery collection.





    Kris Van Assche has been made the new creative
    director of Dior Homme, taking over from Hedi Slimane. But that was
    preceded by the showing of his own label. The romancing-the-sleeves
    look of voluminous shirt with deep, wide arms is hard to pull off -
    even when the volume was caught in by a brief vest. Even harder to
    negotiate are pants with button flies and the concept of one
    pleat-front pant leg joined to a straighter trouser leg. Long shirts
    like Arab dress were plausible and so were the simple tailored suits
    and short raincoat.





    Who would have guessed that behind Véronique Branquinho's
    modest, feminist facade there is a rock chick longing to get out? From
    the moment that a group of Antwerp rockers started their performance,
    the designer abandoned her "film noir" heroes of past seasons in favor
    of a scruffy sloppiness of big lacy sweaters, rolled-up shorts,
    pajama-striped pants and metallic trenches worn with flat toe-hold
    sandals. But this was not a show to top the fashion charts.





    When clothes require detailed attention, a presentation is more
    practical than a show. The lush greenery of palm leaves and bright
    flowers created a tropical landscape for Kenzo's
    models. Riffs on shirt fronts, from the tucked dickie to tiny pleats at
    the front, deserved close inspection, as did the silken pinstripe
    inserts and the accessories like tactile travel bags.





    "I adore men in short shorts," claimed Sonia Rykiel as she watched
    from the front row the suits, where the tailored mini-pants rose from
    sober Bermuda length to high thigh. Rykiel Homme,
    with its knitwear heritage, scored with sweaters that were fine and
    sheer. And the concept of the city suit with its Prince of Wales check
    shorts is one global warming solution for scorching city summers.





    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine
  • laika
    moderator
    • Sep 2006
    • 3787

    #2
    Re: S/S 08 Menswear Press Reviews



    Here is Cathy Horyn's really fantastic review....I think I agree with her on nearly every point, although I haven't looked at YSL yet. Be sure to read this one--it's hugely relevant to the conversation going on in the Raf thread.

    July 3, 2007

    Fashion Review


    In Paris, Some Push Ideas, Others Just Push Product











    PARIS




    Fashion used to be about going places you didn?t know, even if only
    to discover you were sometimes better off at home in your jeans and
    T-shirt. Think of the sexual frontiers that Jean Paul Gaultier crossed
    in his men?s wear, or Yohji Yamamoto with his influential cutting, or
    Yves Saint Laurent in his boundless energy and taste for decadence. The
    Marrakesh express!




    Nowadays, however, designers suffer from a paralyzing phobia. It?s
    called branding. This is the practice of issuing your customers a
    package deal to insulate them from anything that may suggest actuality.
    If Mr. Gaultier once set sail for the wilder shores of gay sex, his
    latest collection of sailor pants and rockabilly denim has degenerated
    into a kind of seaside pantomime ? the Village People at Brighton Beach.




    Mr. Yamamoto still makes a beautiful suit, but with a selection of Bob Dylan
    lyrics as printed details, he literally wears his nostalgia on his
    sleeve. These repetitions can mark a refinement of style as easily as
    they can indicate a slowing down of the mind, but in the age of
    branding they can also act as a dull censoring weight on our
    imagination.




    The French spring men?s collections, which ended on Sunday, kept
    this thought just at bay. Typically, Paris designers are known for
    their larky tolerance of radical ideas and poses, and there were some
    solid displays: Rei Kawakubo?s jackets and shirts for Comme des Garçons
    in triplicate layers of color and size, which played tricks on your
    eye; Ann Demeulemeester?s nonconformist layers punched up with stripes
    and terrific individual pieces.




    And though Junya Watanabe?s show seemed to reduce men to a kernel of
    masculinity, with its shrunken, crinkly jackets and slim shorts worn
    (after Thom Browne) with knee socks, you had to admire his sense of
    freedom. Nothing was sacred, least of all the notion of relaxed
    dressing.




    How relaxed? Some of the crinkly clothes suggested pajamas. Polo
    shirts materialized as cozy jackets. Despite a collaborative use of
    brands like Izod and Brooks Brothers, Mr. Watanabe?s intimate
    techniques refuted standardization.




    With other collections, though, you felt something less personal and
    very nearly unkind. The Louis Vuitton collection was called ?Moon
    Beach,? a reference to lunar tones as well as the sea-haze images of
    Jacques Henri Lartigue taken at Biarritz in the 1920s.




    Accordingly, there were silvery coats, hologram ties, jackets with
    facetlike seams, and lots of sensible if expensive sportswear. But
    after 63 exquisitely rendered outfits in cotton, kangaroo and
    ?pattern-engineered? silk, you felt tranquilized by products.




    I hate clothes that suggest little or no experience with life. This has never been John Galliano?s
    problem. Though his men?s clothes sometimes traffic in stereotypes ?
    the grease-stained rogue, the street hustler ? he at least connects to
    contemporary reality, even if he is satirizing it. A kind of ragtag
    army theme ran through his show, staged in a church, with airplane
    propellers turning menacingly in the background. There were some great
    variations on khaki pants ? cropped, roughed-up, worn over printed
    leggings ? and coats that seemed jury-rigged from European and North
    African influences, as you might expect from rebels on the run.




    Kris Van Assche doesn?t know how to be so convincing. He makes very
    nice clothes, but his designs don?t seem to arise from experience or a
    strong imagination. It is as if they go straight from paper to cloth,
    without any sense of belief or a self-created world to give them a
    distinctive identity. A romantic sensibility alone does not support,
    much less explain, a coyly pleated trouser leg or a drop-neck shirt
    finished with a cute bow tie.




    Mr. Van Assche was Dior?s choice to replace Hedi Slimane as its
    men?s designer. On Sunday, Mr. Van Assche, a former assistant to Mr.
    Slimane, presented a selection of spring looks, focusing on sleek suits
    with quiet details and high-waist ballooning trousers with white
    shirts. Given that Raf Simons showed full trousers just two winter
    seasons ago, he might have avoided them as an opening statement.




    And under Mr. Slimane, Dior Homme nearly always stood out as new and
    provocative, in part because of the casting of his models. Mr. Van
    Assche chose from the pack, giving them a ?30s coif. He has time to
    sharpen his skates, but he must know that the standards at Dior are a
    little higher.




    How do men feel about washed silk? I was wondering that as I looked
    at the Lanvin collection, which Alber Elbaz designs in consort with
    Lucas Ossendrijver. They made such a statement with washed silk ? as
    fluttery shorts, as pajama trousers and layers ? that you have to ask
    the question. The pale lavender-to-gray-cream palette was a clear
    winner, though, and zippered cotton jackets and loose coats lent heft
    to the airy beach layers.




    The standout collections of the Paris spring men?s shows were Yves
    Saint Laurent and Raf Simons ? and they were standouts for a reason.
    You felt these designers were driven to take us to a place we didn?t
    know. Each had something new to say about masculine dress, and they
    said it in a clear and modest way. And they said it using the language
    and symbols of their individual worlds.




    Stefano Pilati was perhaps too narrowly focused in his Saint Laurent
    collection, though that just means the clothes were good and he could
    have shown more. His gift is to capture the decadence of Saint Laurent
    and make it seem to us alive, without the burden of nostalgia. He did
    this with white cotton trousers splattered with paint and beautiful
    cotton shirts, based on a workman?s smock, and unlaced shoes in leather
    or in paint-drip canvas.




    The clothes had a grown-up relaxed authority, supplied by a sense of
    proportion and such well-thought-out details as sweaters and a faded
    sweatshirt with embroidery that mimicked darning. There were also
    pajama trousers (a trend this season) and cropped slouchy sweaters in
    sand tones over loose linen shorts.




    In every collection by Mr. Simons there are clues about his
    intentions, and these clues, like bread crumbs, inevitably lead back to
    his previous shows. This season, he took the trouble, with the help of
    his friend Peter De Potter, a writer who has done the most to document
    Mr. Simons?s work, to produce a press brief, explaining that the
    collection was about breaking down mental barriers.




    ?The www-generation is high on instant knowledge but seems somehow low on actual experience,? the brief said.




    Who would bother to dispute this? More to the point, Mr. Simons
    didn?t need to say it. For 12 years, he has managed to say more with
    his clothes than any writer with a pen (or a keyboard). That is the
    awesome thing about his talent. He has described the whole catalog of
    youthful experience and emotions through the preciseness of his vision.




    And so he did it again Saturday night. What?s new ? and it was new
    for fashion ? was the rethinking (or reconstruction) of sportswear
    fabrics as well as shapes and proportions. In fashion, as Mr. Simons
    knows, these quickly become self-imposed barriers. Why can?t you do
    long sweaters that resemble tunics? Why can?t you lose the waist?
    Suggest volume while holding a straight line? Turn a ski-inspired boot
    into a stripped-down sandal?




    The upshot of these design explorations were lightweight coats and
    tops with drawstrings that created tension or volume, trousers that fit
    somewhat loosely through the hips and then tapered sharply down the
    legs, and some terrific oversize backpacks.




    There was also a communal spirit about the clothes ? guys headed
    off to a summer music festival. It brought to mind a show Mr. Simons
    did five or six years ago, when he had no money, a hippie show in a
    park in Paris. It?s the same freethinking spirit, now with better
    clothes.



    ...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.

    Comment

    • Faust
      kitsch killer
      • Sep 2006
      • 37852

      #3
      Re: S/S 08 Menswear Press Reviews



      I don't find her review convincing. The funny thing is, Ms. Horyn discovered Raf about two years ago. Before that she had no slightest idea of him, probably because a fashion writer was not required to write about menswear. I'm really not sure what Paris park hippie show she's talking about... oh, wait, I know - it's the show based on Siddhartha, a book by Herman Hesse. To compare that to a hippie show is pretty uninformed.



      As far as this collection, she didn't have much to say - Ok, we noticed the pants, but the whole www thing - how many times have we heard, "go and explore the great outdoors, don't sit at your computer (used to be your TV)?" It's become a cliche, too easy. Raf used to be able to portray conflict and avoid cliches. This is too Mr. Nice Guy, too preachy.





      Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

      StyleZeitgeist Magazine

      Comment

      • laika
        moderator
        • Sep 2006
        • 3787

        #4
        Re: S/S 08 Menswear Press Reviews

        Well, Siddartha has historically been the book of choice for lots of hippies, Faust. I've seen many a ragged copy hanging out of a dirty back-pack, especially while traveling in India. I think that is what she is referring to, not that the book is itself hippy-ish. [:)]
        ...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.

        Comment

        • nqth
          Senior Member
          • Sep 2006
          • 350

          #5
          Re: S/S 08 Menswear Press Reviews



          Suzy Menkes made kind of "layering theory" for the week, which was not that a good point imo. I would sayrather "washing out" (and ofcourse shrinking and wrinkling).




          Cathy Horyn wrote as if she had already made her home work. Walter did that 7 years ago, Raf did that 2 seasons ago, Thom Brown did that a season ago. So what? The point is who do it better and why.




          When my friend saw the Comme pics she said she wore clothes like that when she was at secondary school. Must be more than 7 years ago, ofcourse.


          But I think Cathy is always more critical than Suzy (whish is a good thing), who is always supporting (and which is also a good thing:-)


          EDIT: Faust, I think she wrote about the show in the garden wheremodels were wandering between trees and guests, wearing ponchos and loose tunics:-) Agree that this was one of his best shows.

          Comment

          • Faust
            kitsch killer
            • Sep 2006
            • 37852

            #6
            Re: S/S 08 Menswear Press Reviews

            Yes, that's the show I was referring to. To be honest I thought it was a pretty bad show :-(. It was the show that marked Raf's getting away from high quality fabrics and great tailoring into tshirts and sweatshirts. Oh, well - I can't complain much, in his career he still has done more for mens fashion that most.
            Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

            StyleZeitgeist Magazine

            Comment

            • nqth
              Senior Member
              • Sep 2006
              • 350

              #7
              Re: S/S 08 Menswear Press Reviews

              I think it was a good show, because it was so relaxing, comparing with all theshows made in a traditional way (grand halls, palacesand such), and also the clothes were of "free spirits" and contructions:-)People whoknew RS from later period (the street riot shows:-) don't usually really realize his skills at tailoring - and Totemdid start describing RSas having very precise cuts.

              Comment

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