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Fashion Week Ramblings – Women’s F/W 18 Paris – Part 1

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  • Ahimsa
    Vegan Police
    • Sep 2011
    • 1879

    Fashion Week Ramblings – Women’s F/W 18 Paris – Part 1

    by Eugene Rabkin

    "This women’s season, tampered by debilitating cold, held few surprises. Designers by and large stuck to what they do, but they did it so well that those of us who prefer to dig deep were satisfied. Those who prefer fashion to be some kind of an amusement park with clothes, not so much. I’m in the former camp for the most part, though I, too, get bored.

    I also wanted to note that this season many designers really took advantage of what Paris has to offer in terms of location – from the stunning Hotel de Ville for Dries Van Noten to the Gothic church of Saint-Merri for Yang Li, to the ornate library at the Lycée Henry for Uma Wang.

    For me the Paris Fashion Week began with the show of a relative Japanese newcomer, Anrealage. I have followed the brand for several years, and I still cannot make up my mind about it, which I like. Kunihiko Morinaga constantly experiments with physics through clothes – mostly in his fabric choices. His shows remind me a bit of the amazing experiments Hussein Chalayan conducted in the last decade, though they lack Chalayan’s philosophical framework. But there is some kind of philosophy in the clothes, and in the world of mindless consumption (Balenciaga) and empty sloganeering (Dior) that fashion has descended into, it feels good that someone still thinks in concepts. To wit, Morinaga explored the relationship between the body, the clothes, and physical power. He magnified garments threefold, and then shrunk them back with elastic. He used elastic tape, borrowed from kinesiology, to hold the garments to make argyle patterns. And finally, he used mechanochromic material that emits a more increasing amount of light the faster you move. How did it all look? Pretty satisfying. Besides all these experiments that few final customers will be privy to, there were some neat silhouettes and fabric combinations – and I particularly liked the three-layer skirts and the long coats, both in color and in monochrome.

    The next day my first show was that of Dries Van Noten, and here was a bit of an oxymoron of a surprise. One thought that popped into my head was that while Van Noten manages to simultaneously have a pretty wide aesthetic direction – as opposed to say Ann Demeulemeester or Yohji Yamamoto – you still kind of know what you are going to get. And what we got was ornamental beauty of the first order – prints and brocades, sometimes broken up by metallic inserts. The show was inspired by Art Brut – or outsider art – though you would not be able to discern that if you did not have the press notes – at least I couldn’t. The thing with Van Noten is that even when he tackles edgy subjects – like Francis Bacon – he still softens them in his own way. Though I cannot help but wonder what it would look like if the master horse whisperer of the fashion world would give out a scream once in a while."

    Read the full article on SZ-Mag
    StyleZeitgeist Magazine | Store
  • Nickefuge
    Senior Member
    • Nov 2014
    • 860

    #2
    Idk if it’s the first time you did this Eugene, but linking to the actual collections enhances the experience of reading this article. Thank you!
    "The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in."
    -Paris Hilton

    Comment

    • Faust
      kitsch killer
      • Sep 2006
      • 37852

      #3
      Originally posted by Nickefuge View Post
      Idk if it’s the first time you did this Eugene, but linking to the actual collections enhances the experience of reading this article. Thank you!
      All credit for that goes to Ahimsa!
      Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

      StyleZeitgeist Magazine

      Comment

      • Ahimsa
        Vegan Police
        • Sep 2011
        • 1879

        #4
        Fashion Week Ramblings – Women’s F/W 18 Paris – Part 2

        by Eugene Rabkin

        "On Friday Olivier Theyskens presented his most convincing collection since he relaunched his eponymous label two years ago. He firmly stuck to his DNA and his ideal(ized) woman, who is both fragile and strong, and who surely must live firmly outside of this cheap and cynical world. Her dark romanticism was writ large in the lace and the tailoring and Theyskens’s favorite method of closure, hook-and-eye. Her strength was stamped (or stomped) onto the catwalk floor with her mega-platform boots that reminded me of the ones the girls I knew in the ‘90s wore to goth clubs. The #metoo movement was on Theyskens mind, but don’t expect this master couturier to express it via cheap slogans on t-shirts (I’m looking at you, Dior). Instead, he’d rather those boots one day walk all over you.

        The Undercover show that followed was a confirmation of every single reason why designers should continue presenting fashion on the catwalk. Called “We Are Infinite,” the show, opened by Sadie Sink, also known as Mad Max on the show “Stranger Things,” was a celebration of youthful innocence and its transience. It was touching, sincere, and bittersweet. As the voiceover from the movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” kicked in before the finale, the anxiety of being a teenager that most of us forget too soon as adults permeated the room, uplifted the heart, only to shatter it as it seamlessly segued into David Bowie’s “Heroes,” and the young models came out wearing different versions of a raincoat stamped with slogans like “Total Youth” and “Former Juvenile.” Here was a range of emotion that marks a fashion moment in a show that celebrated hope and uplift, however temporary. Backstage after the show the critic Tim Blanks said that he almost teared, and I was glad that I wasn’t the only one. And then there were the clothes, formal high school and athletic uniforms reimagined in different ways, tailoring elements applied to hoodies, different garments spliced together, and those raincoats with the strangely beautiful graphics that can only come from Jun Takahashi’s singular mind. There was also a series of garments made from cotton canvas bonded to an aluminum base, creating a 3D, crinkled effect, and that let you shape the garment with your hands. And there were the new Nike sneakers under Takahashi’s GYAKOSOU collaboration that already have set the streetwear world ablaze.

        My Friday night ended with another late show by Yohji Yamamoto. “Late” could be used in several ways here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if what we are witnessing is the “late period” of Yamamoto’s work. Though the show was uneven, overall it played to Yamamoto’s strengths as a designer. There was volume without sloppiness, sexuality instead of sexiness, the masterful tailoring. To say that we have seen it all before would not exactly be right, but not exactly wrong either. The slow pace, the strumming of acoustic guitars of its soundtrack added to the sense of lethargy that I also felt in January during Yamamoto’s men’s show. Perhaps the old maestro is telling us that he is tired."

        Read the full article on SZ-Mag
        StyleZeitgeist Magazine | Store

        Comment

        • SafetyKat
          Senior Member
          • Aug 2014
          • 169

          #5
          One thing that I've been really appreciating lately about SZ coverage is the acknowledgement of the show's own atmosphere/mood within your photography and present a realistic sense of space. These last two seasons especially, I could help but feel slightly tired perusing through overexposed, sterile shot after shot presented by many of the fashion content mills.

          Matthew Reeves did a great fucking job. The Haider Ackermann coverage alone blew me away.

          Comment

          • Faust
            kitsch killer
            • Sep 2006
            • 37852

            #6
            Thank you. I could not agree more - I gave Matthew specific instructions on how to shoot, though obviously he's a fantastic photographer. It was enormous relief for me to have a real photographer front of house (in addition to Julien backstage) and not shoot myself. We've got a proper team in Paris!
            Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

            StyleZeitgeist Magazine

            Comment

            • Piffen
              Senior Member
              • Aug 2007
              • 359

              #7
              Yeah, seriously, browsing sz-mag.com is a joy. Great work, well done! :)

              Comment

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