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By Eugene Rabkin
"New York Fashion Week has become such a dispiriting spectacle of banality and celebrity entertainment that I did not go a single show. So, on to Paris, the home of real design, or, more accurately, a place where real design is shown. My first show was Dries Van Noten, and It was all pretty, pretty, pretty – without cheap pretensions or sloganeering (see: Dior) – fashion as fashion. Van Noten’s explosions of color were gratifying as usual; though my favorite looks were where he cut colorful inserts into the black or had otherwise matched the monochrome with the colorful. The clash was visceral, no questions asked, no answers needed. Van Noten is one of the few designers whose main business is clothes and not accessories, bags, and perfume, and he has shown us why for the 101st time.
If there is an heir apparent to Helmut Lang, it’s most certainly not Shayne Oliver but Yang Li. This season Oliver was tasked with reinterpreting the work of that avant-darling of the 90s, the period when people still took fashion seriously. What came out was cheap trash. What Oliver does not get, or does not care about, is that Lang’s kink lay in subverting formality, and that’s what made it so delicious. Instead, what we got was Hood By Air but with a different logo. Li, on the other hand, completely gets the Lang vibe. Not that Li needs to be compared with anyone, as his own design lexicon grows stronger with each season. This collection saw a stab at prints that were simply magnificent. That they were rendered on tailored dresses and coats and not on cheap sweatshirts made them all the better. The studded shoes and studded bracelets that coiled around the models’ biceps added to the menace below the tailored surface.
Li is one of the few designers who have been successful at marrying fashion and music, and in this he goes a step further than simply printing lyrics or album graphics on garments. Music performances are becoming a Li signature. In the past it was Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Blixa Bargeld of Einsterzunde Neubauten. This time it was Michael Gira, of the Swans, who performed an acoustic set, as models mingled with the audience. Fashion is most interesting when it has a cultural dialogue with other creative media, and that’s what Li brings to the table.
My next day began at Ann Demeulemeester, where I am sad to say Sebastian Meunier looked like he was spinning his wheels. I thought that he has found his stride during the past two seasons in putting his own stamp on the brand DNA, but striding means moving ahead. I could not tell much difference between this collection and the two before, and I would like to think that I am no stranger when it comes to discerning the subtleties of the Demeulemeester code.
Rick Owens was case in point, showing a collection in which he continued to build on his dress-as-sculpture direction. Everything did seem sculpted, not draped, on the models, and I particularly loved the pleated garments, which looked very fresh. As far as the runway goes, wearability does not seem to weigh heavily on Owens’s mind these days, and by the end of the show he went full-on Comme des Garçons with a series of towering creations that could not exactly be called clothes. A lot of what Owens showed were not exactly dresses, nor skirts, nor tops, but something in-between. That sly in-betweenness is very Owens indeed; his clothes are often pretty hard to frame, and I think it’s deliberate, a part of Owens’s playful-serious creative dichotomy."
Full article on SZ-MAG
"New York Fashion Week has become such a dispiriting spectacle of banality and celebrity entertainment that I did not go a single show. So, on to Paris, the home of real design, or, more accurately, a place where real design is shown. My first show was Dries Van Noten, and It was all pretty, pretty, pretty – without cheap pretensions or sloganeering (see: Dior) – fashion as fashion. Van Noten’s explosions of color were gratifying as usual; though my favorite looks were where he cut colorful inserts into the black or had otherwise matched the monochrome with the colorful. The clash was visceral, no questions asked, no answers needed. Van Noten is one of the few designers whose main business is clothes and not accessories, bags, and perfume, and he has shown us why for the 101st time.
If there is an heir apparent to Helmut Lang, it’s most certainly not Shayne Oliver but Yang Li. This season Oliver was tasked with reinterpreting the work of that avant-darling of the 90s, the period when people still took fashion seriously. What came out was cheap trash. What Oliver does not get, or does not care about, is that Lang’s kink lay in subverting formality, and that’s what made it so delicious. Instead, what we got was Hood By Air but with a different logo. Li, on the other hand, completely gets the Lang vibe. Not that Li needs to be compared with anyone, as his own design lexicon grows stronger with each season. This collection saw a stab at prints that were simply magnificent. That they were rendered on tailored dresses and coats and not on cheap sweatshirts made them all the better. The studded shoes and studded bracelets that coiled around the models’ biceps added to the menace below the tailored surface.
Li is one of the few designers who have been successful at marrying fashion and music, and in this he goes a step further than simply printing lyrics or album graphics on garments. Music performances are becoming a Li signature. In the past it was Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Blixa Bargeld of Einsterzunde Neubauten. This time it was Michael Gira, of the Swans, who performed an acoustic set, as models mingled with the audience. Fashion is most interesting when it has a cultural dialogue with other creative media, and that’s what Li brings to the table.
My next day began at Ann Demeulemeester, where I am sad to say Sebastian Meunier looked like he was spinning his wheels. I thought that he has found his stride during the past two seasons in putting his own stamp on the brand DNA, but striding means moving ahead. I could not tell much difference between this collection and the two before, and I would like to think that I am no stranger when it comes to discerning the subtleties of the Demeulemeester code.
Rick Owens was case in point, showing a collection in which he continued to build on his dress-as-sculpture direction. Everything did seem sculpted, not draped, on the models, and I particularly loved the pleated garments, which looked very fresh. As far as the runway goes, wearability does not seem to weigh heavily on Owens’s mind these days, and by the end of the show he went full-on Comme des Garçons with a series of towering creations that could not exactly be called clothes. A lot of what Owens showed were not exactly dresses, nor skirts, nor tops, but something in-between. That sly in-betweenness is very Owens indeed; his clothes are often pretty hard to frame, and I think it’s deliberate, a part of Owens’s playful-serious creative dichotomy."
Full article on SZ-MAG
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