Elliot and Isabel

Owing testament to the fact that Isabel and I think on the exact same wavelength, her post today falls right in line with what I’ve started to consider about this season, and quite possibly, fashion overall. We also seem to have a lot in common with Cathy Horyn… in posts written before her articles… hmmm. But Isabel is right, Horyn is fantastic because she’s clear.

That being said, I am going to attempt to corral this fashion month in to some sort of streamlined label or set of labels, whereupon I’ll then highlight what I liked best about it. A worst-of-the-worst post will come, obviously, but not tonight. Don’t feel like being negative tonight.

So what did we have? Color. Not as bubble-gummy super-saturated as SS11, but certainly still lots of orange, lots of red, lots of blue. Burberry Prorsum – biggest upholder of this trend. A full on muted rainbow arced over the Prorsum runway, but sadly, there was no gold to be found. It was Bailey at his weakest – I’m not being negative, just pointing it out, now that I’ve brought it up.

We had exotics. Yes. Crazy colors on fur and skins – a fad most likely started by Miuccia Prada, from who it seems trendsetting is as naturally biological as skin and blood and sweat and tears. For as much as she can seem “too much,” she is, I have to admit, a genius.

We had androgynous-to-male structuring across the board. Nothing overall was overtly feminine – even some of Vera Wang’s sheer pleated prairie dresses came in army green and black. We had continued excellence in fabric manipulation – Proenza, without a doubt, Bottega Veneta, Christopher Kane with those strange fluid filled breast-plates.

There’s more, I’m sure, but I want to get to what I am most excited about: the physical application of a specific theme. This was most evident in FW11 than ever before.

Isabel’s post below suggests that when something is slightly intangible in the aforementioned theme’s application, it makes the clothes or the shoes or the purses even more lust-worthy. That is to say – a theme that you know and love, but a theme that also makes you think, as to make that theme become tangible. Phoebe Philo took vintage automobiles as her direct inspiration for Celine. A vintage Le Mans racer and an evening dress as one are as intangible as the idea is sensational, but in Philo’s manifest, they become perfectly tangible and, pardon, f*cking absolutely hands-down out-of-the-park spectacular. Let’s look at some examples:

Can’t you perfectly see it? Anyone with any design sense should be able too. This even evokes old, luxe car smells – the ashtray, the sun-burnt leather, the smell of metal in the summer. A+++. Celine is, maybe, the strongest house in the fashion world today.

Marc Jacobs’ Louis Vuitton collection for FW11 was, and I hate to admit this because I don’t like him at all, phenomenal. The theme was The Night Porter, an old movie about, well, night porting, I guess. But in any event – it was a tricky theme, one which Jacobs executed perfectly in a very kinky, very perv-y, very haute, very cheeky, very beautiful, very luxurious and very somehow current way. I had to look few a through times, but, damn. This was amazing. Another A+. You know how some designers have themes that are just so easy, that you don’t even have to think about it? And it all looks just that… easy. Marc has been guilty of this before (the campy Louis Vuitton fiasco that was SS11… too obvious!) But this – this a pure, specific, real base from which intense fantasy can spring and become real all over again. The intangible in to the tangible. Imagine being at the Plaza Athenee in 1961 at 12 midnight and a beautiful woman in a coat and garter-stockings is with you in the elevator, taking you to your floor, languidly smoking a cigarette…

Givenchy. As we’ve posted, this collection is the third and final A+ of the season. Yet here is an example of a specific theme that is difficult to label – you know, my God you know, that it was clear-cut in Riccardo Tisci’s head. Indeed, this vagary makes my affection all that much more condensed. I want to literally pitch a tent in Givenchy’s show room and just look at this stuff for 6 months straight. My take, now that I’ve had more time to think about it: 1988, Miami, a bathroom, with malachite and gold fixtures, some blow, Dior Poison perfume, and a pet Ocelot. Alt, if you need editorial concept ideas, we’re your breadwinners.

Sarah Burton’s second round at Alexander McQueen was quite strong – very fantastical, aristocratic and perhaps Disney-fied in the vein of evil-Queens-with-rakish-cheekbones-and-fabulous-furs. We said it felt like Narnia’s Ice Queen (or whatever her name was), but that being said, who knows if this was Burton’s inspiration. You can just tell there is a specificity here, roped in with McQueen’s seemingly/thankfully lasting shapes and general disposition. This collection gets an A-.

Rodarte went the way of Kansas, depression-era Kansas with a little bit of Oz Kansas to be exact. I did not like the collection, but a lot of people did. It held that creepy, oddly youthful Rodarte-ness, yet surprised editors with its softness and maturity. While this grain print dress was the most obvious and tangible element of the presentation, there were lighter, simpler cuts and palettes that evoked much more by way of desirability. For me, though, this collection was pretentious and weak. C+.

Akris! Akris was stunning, and probably overlooked by many. I had not looked at Akris before this season. The theme, to me, was London in the fall – while the sun still lingers with summer light, but with that feeling of impending deadness permeating the old and quiet and motionless and somewhat off-putting streets. Pure imaginative bliss, thinking about how this all came together – again, if you haven’t gotten it yet, the conversion of the intangible in to the tangible, the bits and pieces in to the thought-out fantasy. And that’s what fashion should be about.

ALSO, MODELS OF THE SEASON: Hanne Gaby Odiele (in the Akris pic) and Ming Xi.

-Elliot