LUXE TREND 39
SPRING SUMMER 2018 - THE FASHION HAPPENING
Pierre Bergé once said: “Fashion is not art but needs an artist to create it”. Bergé, YSL’s longtime partner and a member of couture’s ancien regime, died a few months ago. Yves St. Laurent was a fashion avatar able to merge the Haute Couture discipline of Dior with the artful irreverence of Schiaparelli.
As our world has become increasingly more unstable, erratic and full of crises, fashion is retreating into our mind's background. Within this crisis environment, it was somewhat expected to assume the Spring Summer 2018 collections might offer a dystopian fashion vision that reflected the current world mood.
Instead, designers and fashion houses were feeling rather buoyant about the state of the industry and the world in general. This season, designers were in the mood to party.
The season began with a glitter-filled Bergdorf Goodman, as imagined by Linda Fargo and social media sensation, Giovanna Battaglia. @Bat_gio, as Giovanna is known to her several thousand Instagram followers, prefers dramatic, sequined and bejeweled creations, appropriate to attract attention on a mobile screen. Linda Fargo happily obliged by transforming BG into the equivalent of a world as if seen through disco ball eyes. Combined with a de riguer pop-up shop, this was the equivalent of Fun, Excitement, Fashion!!!!! moment for the store.
The Fashion Happening became one of the codewords of the season. Alexander Wang’s Wangfest moved the entire show - and the crowd - to a street in Williamsburg, Chanel built another mega structure at the Grand Palais, while Gucci showed in their new Spazio Gucci in Milan, a space that is half laboratory, half gallery. But it was Donatella Versace who stole the entire season with a collection honoring her brother Gianni. Five of the top 1990s supermodels walked the Versace catwalk creating the most talked-about show of the last several seasons. It was a tonic to the eyes of a weary and jaded international fashion crowd. Glamour was back if for a brief moment, strutting its stuff to Freedom 90 and reminding us all - rather wistfully - that when George Michael died, fashion’s capacity to communicate optimism may have died with him.
In terms of trends for SS18, glitter and sequins prevailed; it is a rather misjudged, overhyped trend, one that will litter our social media feeds for the next few months. Feathers were another favorite material for designers, used from daywear to eveningwear.
Anthony Vaccarello's new collection for YSL was perfectly elegant and au courant. Feathers decorated tops and skirts and thigh-high boots that are probably sold out already. Historically, this was in perfect sync with the brand founder’s vision. This hard-edged collection, inspired of Betty Catroux's style, was softened and made current through innovative silhouettes and interesting cuts. The show that took place in full view of the Eiffel Tower, had the tempo of modern Parisian chic.
The trench coat also became a major theme, first as reimagined by Christoper Bailey at Burberry who created colorful coats that will also prove to be sellouts. At Loewe, JW Anderson fringed an asymmetrical trench coat. At Maison Margiela, Galliano sent a trench down the runway that would have been an adequate fashion statement for the season, even if it was not followed by other gorgeous pieces. Trimmed in white marabou feathers, it was a trench not for the trenches, but for the spotlight.
Materials - Plastic is making a resurgence, probably thanks to Raf Simons at Calvin Klein. This season it was Chanel, Balmain, and Valentino who worked with the material. Plastic cut into fringe at Chanel was a fun and innovative way to work with the material. For accessories, plastic may be the way to keep costs down and fashion interest desire up.
In Milan, Prada, Bottega Veneta, and Fendi were the standout collections, despite all the press at Versace. The time for those iconic Versace prints has sadly passed. (Even Gianni would have thought so and done something different). Fendi's sharp stripes and Prada's prints were fantastic explorations on how to keep these lines interesting. There is more and more to explore at Fendi, especially since the delivered pieces are of high quality and full of innovations in construction.
It was hard to decipher if the shoes or the bags at Prada would be the most desirable accessory pieces for next season. Intricately constructed cartoon bags looked great on the runway, as did the printed raincoats. If it is a rainy season, the streets would certainly look colorful and interesting.
With each season Rick Owens is becoming a fashion prophet. While more restrained than Rei Kawakubo, Rick Owens is unafraid of exploring the possibilities that exist at the intersection of fashion and art. Through his experimentations in draping - so referential to his years in Antwerp’s Royal Academy - there is the recursive theme to his design that might prove to possess the stylistic DNA of a future fashion.
In the late 1990s, there was a time when a new interest in fashion Minimalism emerged. Jil Sander, Miuccia Prada, Calvin Klein, Ann Demeulemeester pushed through the cacophony of grunge and post 1980s decadence to create a style that was anchored in luxurious, rigorous simplicity. We seem to be at a similar cultural juncture when we have a growing desire to create order out of chaos, when the internet has become our equivalent of a central nervous system, and we are constantly responding to all kinds of stimuli.
A modern -- or post-modern -- Minimalism is where our style will find its resting place, after successive seasons of forced "individuality." It will take a group of bold artists to define what is next for Luxury and Fashion and what will serve us best as they, and we, dream up a future that is far from dystopian.