Los Angeles Fashion Week: Two bright spots in the Concept shadows
It’s probably not a good sign when the shadow play at a venue’s entrance generates as much enthusiasm as the fashion shows and presentations going on inside -- as was the case at Concept Los Angeles on Saturday night.
We actually weren’t going to mention the DIY parade of shadow puppetry at all -- except that it made us think a lot about the philosophical parable of Plato’s Cave. In that allegory, Plato speaks about prisoners who, because they’re chained to the wall of a cave, come to mistakenly believe that the shadows being cast on the wall are reality.
Parts of Los Angeles Fashion Week can have a shadows-mistaken-for-reality feel about them. Though, in recent seasons, we’ve tried mightily to focus on the positive -- the bright spots if you will -- that discovery of some of the new and emerging design talent this city has to offer that keep us coming back.
Last season’s Concept slate at the Mack Sennett studios managed to do just that -- not only pulling together an impressive handful of local talent but also introducing some international designers to the mix as well (most notably Turkish designer Özgür Masur).
Perhaps that left us hoping for some forward momentum this season -- especially since it is the oldest surviving event on the LAFW calendar. Instead there was a cavernous space (the unfinished Ace Museum space on La Brea), a pared-down schedule featuring informal presentations by just a handful of brands, one traditional runway-style show and a finale performance that combined elements of music, art and fashion. But guess what? There were a couple of bright spots amid the shadows.
One of those bright spots was Mathiasen, a local label now in its third season. Namesake designer Matthew Mathiasen told us his spring and summer 2015 collection of easygoing skirts, dresses and tops for women had been inspired by the colors and topography of the desert. “The landscape, geo stones and especially desert succulents,” he told us.
The result was a handful of casual color-blocked skirts, pants, shorts and crop-tops as well as a couple of more formal-looking blazers (one in blue and another in a desert orange) with white contrast-taped lapels and hem.
The second bright spot was Emily Daccarett (who had the distinction of staging the night’s sole runway show) whose pre-show short film (a sinister riff on the humans versus toons tension of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” that even included a cowering cartoon rabbit) was far heavier stuff than the floral, flirty and flouncy (we mean that in a good way) collection that followed.
A range of floral patterns were used across a collection of flare-legged jumpsuits, strapless floor-length dresses, sleeveless, midriff-baring tops and paired with solid colors in mixed fabrication skinny-legged trousers and skirts.
Non-floral -- but equally garden-fresh -- were an empire-waist dress that paired a billowing green skirt with a black bodice and a series of tops with sheer pieces layered over top or fluttering at the arm attached at shoulder and wrist.
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