By CATHY HORYN
Published: February 27, 2008
Paris
But Monday’s Dior show represented a kind of defeat of his way of doing things. The clothes were respectable, ladylike, seemingly culled from the early 1960s pages of Paris Vogue and L’Officiel — demure A-line suits, printed silk dresses, fur coats with opera-length sleeves — and the only thing that looked really Galliano, almost as a concession to his flamboyance, were the overteased hairdos and Baby Jane lacquered eyes.
So: what of Mr. Galliano’s earlier attempts to bring Dior into the 21st century with modern cutting? What are we to think now of his famous hobo collection or the Matrix show that tore into the house’s perfect seams and produced new shapes? Were they just about a moment?
If the answer is yes, then Mr. Galliano is right to move forward and attempt to satisfy the apparently growing world of affluent shoppers. Yet, apart from the evening clothes, which drew effectively on his recent couture show, one cannot see what connects the bland minks and working-women tweeds to Mr. Galliano’s ideals. And that’s a problem not just for Dior but also for a fashion genius. It makes for a real limbo.
The opening days of the French fall collections felt unusually bogged down, with a weak show by Martin Margiela on Monday and a heavy, introspective journey by Yohji Yamamoto, with the designer himself singing a ballad on the soundtrack.
One of the most astute and complicated designers of his generation, Mr. Margiela would have to rely on the good will of his audience if he expected people to see design virtues (or signs of effort) in beige minidresses with jumbo cowl necks, one-shoulder jersey tops sweeping over mismatched leggings, and black leather jackets that soared upward at the shoulder like a smokestack.
Nothing made sense even by Mr. Margiela’s enigmatic standards. In the past, he has always seemed a designer who reacts to things from his consciousness, a quality that not only set him apart but also gave his fashion extra perceptive power. This collection, though, looked strictly off the cuff, or maybe was the work of assistants.
That was Mr. Yamamoto scraping along with a guitar, and he wasn’t half bad, either. The strong points in this pure Yohji show were coats and jackets tailored from paper-thin black leather with some edges left raw. The underpinnings were soft and flowing, and most of the coats were also constructed with fabric.
Mr. Yamamoto likes to dissolve sartorial boundaries. Hence, you could not clearly tell if the blue suede front to a black jacket was a shirt or part of the whole. But some of the gathered skirts, with an extra tire of fabric around the middle, looked dustily Yamamoto, with pious allusions to women in bonnets and rustic stoles. He ended on a modern note at least, with lightweight cotton cloaks, pants and flat shoulder bags by Hermès.
Jun Takahashi of Undercover began with a simple premise. He asked himself a series of questions — What is tailoring? What is American sportswear? — and his responses revealed how amazingly fluent he is as a designer, able to mutate classics like the masculine pantsuit and the motorcycle jacket.
The models’ latex cone heads and mutant eyes were a case of comic overkill; Mr. Takahashi’s clothes expressed everything he had to say of the moment. The coolest looks were narrow cargo pants made from pieces of denim and outdoor fabric, like waxed cotton and a hunter plaid that resembled Barbour lining.
From shoulders to hem, tailored jackets followed rounded lines, and circular shapes transformed common sweatshirts and long cardigans. Motorcycle jackets, a favorite of Japanese designers, now came in primary colors and were layered with thick beige shrugs embellished with mounds of feathers or yarn curls. The results were eye-changing.
A designer who controls his pattern making can say the most with his clothes. It’s just like a writer with language. That’s why Karl Lagerfeld and Azzedine Alaïa are the poets of fashion and Rei Kawakubo is our Gertrude Stein. Rick Owens approaches pattern making with the same determination: to make it express the shapes and ideas he has in his mind.
Using wool and leather, sometimes in combination with denim and silver piping, Mr. Owens on Sunday gave jackets a voluptuous shape. A number of them had an hourglass line, with a peplum formed by squares of fabric, while others had cube-shaped billows at the back. If you were to mentally trace the silhouette made by a jacket’s extra volumes — the cubes, the wings of fabrics — you would roughly have the outline of the contemporary person in the street, with her layers. Ms. Kawakubo has made similar visual connections.
At the opposite extreme were cashmere tunics and biker shorts, as well as snug fur jackets or vests that looked tough despite the delicate way Mr. Owens draped them. Still, the energy and modernity came from the tailoring of the harder fabrics. It’s not difficult to see elements of Paris couture in the shapes, or the influence of Mr. Galliano’s early cutting techniques at Dior. But Mr. Owens has sought to refine the methods. The dragging flaps on the zippered boots are all of apiece, as is the collection.
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Paris
But Monday’s Dior show represented a kind of defeat of his way of doing things. The clothes were respectable, ladylike, seemingly culled from the early 1960s pages of Paris Vogue and L’Officiel — demure A-line suits, printed silk dresses, fur coats with opera-length sleeves — and the only thing that looked really Galliano, almost as a concession to his flamboyance, were the overteased hairdos and Baby Jane lacquered eyes.
So: what of Mr. Galliano’s earlier attempts to bring Dior into the 21st century with modern cutting? What are we to think now of his famous hobo collection or the Matrix show that tore into the house’s perfect seams and produced new shapes? Were they just about a moment?
If the answer is yes, then Mr. Galliano is right to move forward and attempt to satisfy the apparently growing world of affluent shoppers. Yet, apart from the evening clothes, which drew effectively on his recent couture show, one cannot see what connects the bland minks and working-women tweeds to Mr. Galliano’s ideals. And that’s a problem not just for Dior but also for a fashion genius. It makes for a real limbo.
The opening days of the French fall collections felt unusually bogged down, with a weak show by Martin Margiela on Monday and a heavy, introspective journey by Yohji Yamamoto, with the designer himself singing a ballad on the soundtrack.
One of the most astute and complicated designers of his generation, Mr. Margiela would have to rely on the good will of his audience if he expected people to see design virtues (or signs of effort) in beige minidresses with jumbo cowl necks, one-shoulder jersey tops sweeping over mismatched leggings, and black leather jackets that soared upward at the shoulder like a smokestack.
Nothing made sense even by Mr. Margiela’s enigmatic standards. In the past, he has always seemed a designer who reacts to things from his consciousness, a quality that not only set him apart but also gave his fashion extra perceptive power. This collection, though, looked strictly off the cuff, or maybe was the work of assistants.
That was Mr. Yamamoto scraping along with a guitar, and he wasn’t half bad, either. The strong points in this pure Yohji show were coats and jackets tailored from paper-thin black leather with some edges left raw. The underpinnings were soft and flowing, and most of the coats were also constructed with fabric.
Mr. Yamamoto likes to dissolve sartorial boundaries. Hence, you could not clearly tell if the blue suede front to a black jacket was a shirt or part of the whole. But some of the gathered skirts, with an extra tire of fabric around the middle, looked dustily Yamamoto, with pious allusions to women in bonnets and rustic stoles. He ended on a modern note at least, with lightweight cotton cloaks, pants and flat shoulder bags by Hermès.
Jun Takahashi of Undercover began with a simple premise. He asked himself a series of questions — What is tailoring? What is American sportswear? — and his responses revealed how amazingly fluent he is as a designer, able to mutate classics like the masculine pantsuit and the motorcycle jacket.
The models’ latex cone heads and mutant eyes were a case of comic overkill; Mr. Takahashi’s clothes expressed everything he had to say of the moment. The coolest looks were narrow cargo pants made from pieces of denim and outdoor fabric, like waxed cotton and a hunter plaid that resembled Barbour lining.
From shoulders to hem, tailored jackets followed rounded lines, and circular shapes transformed common sweatshirts and long cardigans. Motorcycle jackets, a favorite of Japanese designers, now came in primary colors and were layered with thick beige shrugs embellished with mounds of feathers or yarn curls. The results were eye-changing.
A designer who controls his pattern making can say the most with his clothes. It’s just like a writer with language. That’s why Karl Lagerfeld and Azzedine Alaïa are the poets of fashion and Rei Kawakubo is our Gertrude Stein. Rick Owens approaches pattern making with the same determination: to make it express the shapes and ideas he has in his mind.
Using wool and leather, sometimes in combination with denim and silver piping, Mr. Owens on Sunday gave jackets a voluptuous shape. A number of them had an hourglass line, with a peplum formed by squares of fabric, while others had cube-shaped billows at the back. If you were to mentally trace the silhouette made by a jacket’s extra volumes — the cubes, the wings of fabrics — you would roughly have the outline of the contemporary person in the street, with her layers. Ms. Kawakubo has made similar visual connections.
At the opposite extreme were cashmere tunics and biker shorts, as well as snug fur jackets or vests that looked tough despite the delicate way Mr. Owens draped them. Still, the energy and modernity came from the tailoring of the harder fabrics. It’s not difficult to see elements of Paris couture in the shapes, or the influence of Mr. Galliano’s early cutting techniques at Dior. But Mr. Owens has sought to refine the methods. The dragging flaps on the zippered boots are all of apiece, as is the collection.
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