A Little Bit Softer Now
The funny thing about the futuristic costumes of a 1930s Buck Rogers serial and the geometric, “modern” 1960s designs by Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges is, they all kind of look alike.
The common “Star Trek” vision of how we would dress for the millennium and beyond was as wrongheaded as some of George Orwell’s predictions in “1984.” (Instead of imagining automatic dishwashing machines in every home, Orwell foresaw organized municipal dirty-dish pickup and return, a sort of home delivery service that treated tableware like laundry.)
Now that the future is here, the most forward-looking designers don’t plan to clothe us in broad-shouldered, quasi-military jumpsuits. Their versions of modernity are feminine and often surprisingly romantic.
Without seeming old-fashioned, Yohji Yamamoto, Helmut Lang and Ann Demeulemeester have expanded their signature looks to explore a more ethereal aesthetic. The result is their work is coming closer to the heavily embellished concoctions of more established designers such as Christian Lacroix, Emanuel Ungaro and Valentino. The common thread, so to speak, is a love of color and decoration.
“Even the designers known for a harder edge are adding the energy and softness of color,” says Saks Fifth Avenue fashion director Nicole Fiscelis. “And we’ve seen all kinds of designers working with very delicate knitwear and beading, and that attention to artistic details is bringing us to a new appreciation of beautiful crafts.”
Yamamoto refuses to stick to the stereotype of avant-garde Japanese designers as grim reapers dedicated to making the perfect shroud. At one time, he did use the funereal palette and hard, asymmetric cutting that defined that genre. But he is too restless and talented a soul to be constrained by such conventions.
He opened his spring show here with oversized trousers or skirts paired with tight black and white striped French fisherman’s pullovers. An umbilical cord of fabric twisted up and coiled around the neck, forming trompe l’oeil suspenders. The small tops and baggy bottoms made the models appear as vulnerable as Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp.
Although the odd skirts and pants draped and wrapped the body, Yamamoto used precise tailoring as well. The sleeve edges of superbly cut black jackets were beaded with Art Deco patterns. A flowing black coat dress drifted around the body like an elegant peignoir. With the lightness of Yamamoto’s touch, lapels formed of tissue-thin layers of silk became fluttering wings of desire.
Helmut Lang’s best-known styles have become generic--plain-front chinos and jackets as basic as medical lab coats. While he didn’t ignore the people who have adopted these as an urban uniform, he experimented with knitwear and pleats. Just as the eye began to adjust to the silhouette of sculptural, knee-length skirts formed of terraces of sheer, pleated white material, he introduced them in brilliant shades of blue.
Then returning to pales, he mixed white and ivory, pairing a twinset of a long, ribbed cardigan and matching tank with a jacket and a skirt of tiny pleats. The effect was pretty, soft and very summery.
There’s a nasty saying that you can always recognize an overweight woman’s closet, because it will be full of hats, shoes and handbags. Lang thumbed his nose at the escalating status-bag competition by creating a functional handbag surrogate devoid of gold initials. A wide nylon sash wrapped the waist, ending in a fan of zippered pouches. The lowly fanny pack never looked so interesting.
Belgian Ann Demeulemeester is the designer who best understands slouchy. Sometimes, it seems she invented it. She continues to make the sexiest low-slung, semi-sloppy trousers, but for spring added electric jolts of color--high wattages of purple, red and blue in slinky, sleeveless jersey dresses, many cut with asymmetric hems.
It’s no secret that the most expensive clothes don’t always appear complex on the surface. The Givenchy styles Audrey Hepburn wore in the ‘60s, for example, were elegant in their simplicity. But sometime in the ‘80s, the idea that more is more surfaced, and designers like Christian Lacroix and Emanuel Ungaro were happy to pile on shirring, pattern, lace, fringe, beading and embroidery for customers who applauded their cacophonous symphony of busy-ness.
They continue to design for the woman who thinks animal prints are a neutral. (What, they’re not?) Although Ungaro continued to combine prints with dizzying bravado, assembling an outfit of a paisley shirt, a plaid jacket, a panther-spotted skirt and floral scarf wrapping the hips, one of his most refreshing ideas was to offer flowered cardigans as cover-ups for matching flowered chiffon dresses. How nice, how logical, how nearly plain.
Valentino need only decide what mood he is in--he can go the way of fur-trimmed boas and lace-encrusted multiple patterns, or cut a line as clean as if it were drawn with a scalpel. In his spring collection, he did both.
Navy trousers as skinny as leggings combined with narrow, single-breasted coats. Then, following a western theme, he presented perforated leathers that would confound any real Marlboro Man. A miniskirt became a topographical map of lace, beads and swirling embroidery on leather. To his credit, Valentino knows enough to pair a fussy skirt like that with a plain jacket and a solid silk T-shirt. Trim of crystal fringe appeared repeatedly, adding a little something extra to simple jackets and coats.
Evening dresses, always one of Valentino’s strengths, ranged from a shirred chartreuse slipdress overlaid with pink lace in the form of a butterfly to long gowns of three shades of pastel crepe. After feathers adorning gilded chiffon, his combinations of lavender, acid green and powder pink were an oasis of calm.
Of course, not everyone takes their overloaded fashion straight. Within many collections are single items to treasure--a sequined twinset at Gaultier, a narrow, side-slit navy silk skirt edged with lace at Ungaro, a shaped jacket dripping tasseled beading at Lacroix.
It isn’t heresy to extract one spectacular piece from a designer’s densely patterned ensemble. Sometimes it is a beautiful and very sane way to avoid vertigo.
