I have a suggestion for all the universities across the globe offering courses in fashion design: what about adding a new subject such as “On finding inspirations and being able to tackle them in an interesting way and to intelligently elaborate with the press about your collections”?
Yes, I agree, maybe that’s too long for the name of just one discipline, but I honestly think we desperately need something like that.
If you work in the creative industry you know that, at times, finding inspiration can be difficult especially in the fashion field where almost everything has already been (more or less) done.
Yet, once you find that smashing idea, that clever inspiration, it can be hard to tackle it in an innovative way and then explain somebody else what you tried to express by using it.
Indeed in my experience I have seen two different reactions to the question “Where did you get the inspiration for this collection?”: a vague and puzzled expression that superficially said “I don’t know, it just happened”, or a rather convoluted explanation that involved several works of art and being three years old and seeing an elderly aunt wearing a crimson hat at a family funeral while everybody else was dressed in black.
Take Bora Aksu’s Spring/Summer 2011 collection, showcased a couple of days ago during London Fashion Week.
Seen from a distance, the intricate silhouettes, surface elaboration, tulle, silk, brocade and lace inserts and padded bits and pieces looked extremely interesting, especially matched with tights printed with what looked like the membranous texture of insect wings.
Then Aksu explained that the inspiration for this collection – mainly based on a black and grey palette with splashes of vivid red – came from observing a colony of ants on a summer afternoon.
It was then that you realised that the wing-like motifs on the tights represented the patterns left by ants, while the sinuous padded motifs on the body-con dresses accessorised with woollen ants (apparently hand-crocheted by Aksu’s aunt…) that crawled on the wrists and the heads of the models were references to an ant’s anatomy, head, trunk and metasoma included.
Aksu usually likes playing on contrasts and finding balances between different elements in his designs, so he threw in the mix delicate ruffles as a reference to 50s lingerie and corsets, though this inspiration sadly generated an unnecessary amount of romantic frilly tops and apron dresses, disrupting the image of ant-woman the designer had conjured up through some of his strongest silhouettes.
So here comes my initial disquisition about inspirations, how to tackle and explain them: indeed, you wished Aksu had maybe elaborated a bit better the ant theme, that was maybe developed in a very literal way in some cases, generating also a few unnecessary repetitions.
You honestly feel that things would have worked better if he had thrown in the mix 1954 American black and white science fiction film Them! by Gordon Douglas with its gigantic irradiated ants, trashy Joan Collins selling real estate deals in an area taken over by giant ants in Bert I. Gordon’s 1977 Empire of the Ants and H.G. Wells eponymous 1905 story.
I'm sure that, in this way he would have had the chance to play a bit more on the fear that mutant women may generate, maybe creating a slightly more thrilling collection, with stronger shapes and more marked contrasts between black and different shades of grey.
Then there is the curious case of Emilio de la Morena that proves fashion comes in cycles and we are at the moment copying – oh, sorry, I meant to say, paying homage to – the 60s.
The designer was indeed inspired in his collection by Argentinean artist Lucio Fontana’s slits.
Band Aid-like perforations supposedly evoking Fontana's holes were another big theme and there was emphasis on sculptural pieces highlighted by Scott Wilson’s chunky jewellery pieces.
There were some hints at architecture, but the Fontana inspiration prevailed, especially in the dresses that seemed to be constructed by using 6 canvases with the iconic slits, two forming the front and back of the dresses and four for the skirt.
Now, professional fashion journalists know that fashion designer Mila Schön was among the first ones to be inspired by Lucio Fontana who actually created in 1961 yellow and black designs with slits and holes for Bruna Bini and Giuseppe Telese's atelier.
The artist’s works also resurfaced every now and then in other collections, even more contemporary ones, throughout the decades.
Emilio de la Morena is a young designer, with a group of supporters comprising fashion journalists and bloggers as young as him who weren’t born when Schön was borrowing from Fontana’s works or who aren't too bothered about fashion history because they think it’s all so old, irrelevant and boring, and this explains why some critics may end up considering this collection as extremely fresh and innovative.
Yet elaborating the Fontana inspiration a bit better would have probably allowed Emilio de la Morena to reach out for the dimension behind the canvas like the artist had tried to do, rather than just recreating Fontana's slits and holes on the fabric.
You could argue that there are still a few days left and plenty of designers to see during London Fashion Week, and the capital has therefore got the time it needs to show all the anarchic and bizarre potential that other fashion capitals do not have. Who knows, there may even be designers who will reach out for that extra spatial dimension Fontana was aiming for and even manage to elaborate their main reference points and inspirations in a truly original and fresh way.
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