At her Spring/Summer 2015 Red Label show in London, Vivienne Westwood made her position regarding the Scottish Independence Referendum clear, while, during the Parisian catwalk shows, Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel staged a (fake) feminist protest.
Yet politics rarely appear on the runways for one precise reason: commenting on such a topic can be rather risky for a fashion house on both a commercial and style level. But, then again, if it is done in a clever way, it can prove refreshing, intriguing and also ironic, as design duo Talbot Runhof proved during Paris Fashion Week.
Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof actually moved from couture fabrics and embellishments – hand-painted silk brocade jacquards, iridescent mikador, fluid crêpe, structured cloqué, silk jacquard velvet, sequined striped motifs, floral and coral embroidery – for their Spring/Summer 2015 collection, entitled "From Russia With Love".
The loose and relaxed silhouettes, hoodie dresses, tunic tops with cropped culottes, billowing bell and ball skirts, metallized white cotton eyelet lace hoodie parka, boxing pants and tennis rompers in a wide palette of fresh colours (sunshine yellow, lupine pink, aquarius blue, gold and silver…) pointed instead towards the sort of sport couture mix of activewear and evening gowns considered as fashionable and desirable at the moment.
The political twist was introduced thanks to collages of images featuring Vladimir Putin courtesy of graphic artist Stephan Heering, transformed into textile works of art by Martin Leuthold of historical company Jakob Schlaepfer.
The Russian president appeared photoshopped winking in a pin up style with the Tour Eiffel wrapped on his head with a stylish blue, white and red ribbon; hugging bare-chested the Empire State Building à la King Kong, peeking behind Buckingham Palace and overimposed on an Italian flag. A tongue in cheek slogan urging to visit these capitals before he does completed the garments.
The printed, crystallised and sparkling collages decorated basketball tricots and striped jerseys making a sporty and elegant statement.
While the duo expressed in this way their shock and horror at the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, they dispelled the frightening aura around Putin with irony and humour. In this collection Putin becomes an excuse to criticise not only him and his allies and admirers, but also those authoritarian political forces oppressing the countries they govern with their own ideals and visions, but with no democracy in mind.
Most Russian fashion media outlets may not be interested in publishing these images being too scared ("we seriously doubt that you'll find them at GUM next season", the design duo states about the Putin pieces in their official press release…), but their attitude makes you think.
A jester making fun of the king would have still been approved in the Middle Ages; fashion mirrors the world and the society we are living in and a contemporary fashion designer should be allowed to freely comment on society while most of the time this doesn't happen (you can be sure that if Italian designers had been more vocal against Berlusconi, maybe the country would have got rid of him in a much quicker way…).
While Talbot Runhof's sales went up in the last few years and you can bet that this collection mixing irony and haute couture in a wearable way will gain them new fans, maybe there is more behind it, as the designers could be trying to tell us something about the future. Indeed in The Age of Extremes the late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm stated: "Why brilliant fashion designers, a notoriously non-analytic breed, sometimes succeed in anticipating the shape of things to come better than professional predictors, remains one of the most obscure questions in history and, for the historian of culture, one of the most central." Maybe more politics on the runways wouldn't be such a bad idea as it would even provide us with a view of what the future may have in store for us.
Your S/S 15 collection is inspired by the events in Ukraine: can you tell us more about it and was there a specific event in the news that triggered this inspiration?
Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof: The inspiration was a juxtaposition of sporty and couture couture shapes in sporty fabrics. However, while working on this collection we were very moved by the events in Ukraine, especially the downing of MH17 and Putin's ice cold cynicism towards the victims and their families. We decided to use this collection as a vehicle to express our frustration and helplessness.
What kind of images did you use as inspiration on your moodboard? Did Putin for example appear among these images?
Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof: The mood board was full of vintage tennis pictures, basketball uniforms, baseball jerseys, embroideries, flowers, red/white/blue stripes. As far as the T-shirts are concerned, the whole thing started with a T-shirt that was selling at a pop-up store in Moscow's GUM, it depicted Mr Putin in a Hawaiian shirt, sipping on a colourful cocktail while vacationing in recently annexed Crimea.We commissioned graphic artist Stephan Heering to create 4 different collage motifs: Visit Paris, Visit New York, Visit Milan and Visit London. Then Swiss textile maven Martin Leuthold from Jakob Schlaepfer made these beautiful treatments on basketball tricot jersey with rhinestones. We don't really see these images as anti-Putin: they are more tongue-in-cheek Putin and represent a much larger scale of the problem, which is his thinking and the people who think like him.
What kind of fabrics did you use for your designs? Any special technological fabrics?
Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof: We used lots of very traditional or very high tech fabrics, from an extremely light hand-painted silk brocade to a basketball tricot jersey to striped sweatshirt jersey and back to iridescent silk and lurex mikador. One of the highlights though is a cotton eyelet lace with lasered traces of metallic foil.
In the past we have seen fashion being employed as protest and Vivienne Westwood often uses the runway to send out social and political messages. Can clothes still be used as a form of protest nowadays when profit comes before creativity and rebellion?
Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof: We suppose it all depends on one's priorities. If profit is the main objective, then addressing political or social issues is perhaps not a brilliant idea as consumers tend to tighten the purse strings when they feel slighted or offended.
If fashion got more political could it help creating more socially and politically engaged people?
Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof: Absolutely, many fashion designers are celebrated as superstars, admired and worshipped by their fans. If all it takes is a few movie stars dumping buckets of ice water on their heads to get the ball rolling and raise $115 million for a disease basically unheard of by the general public, then, yes, fashion can certainly be used to give something back to society, help people think more about their actions and the consequences of their actions and make them more aware of the world around them.
Image credits for this post
All images Courtesy/Copyright Talbot Runhof
1. "Visit Paris" printed and crystallized white basketball tricot and metallized eyelet cotton lace skirt;
2. "Visit New York" printed, sequined and crystallized jersey hoodie dress
and red/white/blue cotton plaid skirt;
3. "Visit Paris" printed, sequined and crystallized grey and navy striped
jersey bow top and red/white/blue cotton plaid skirt;
4. "Visit London" printed, sequined and crystallized grey and navy striped jersey dress;
5. Metallized white cotton eyelet lace dress with red/white/blue embroidered collar;
6. Grey and navy striped jersey bow gown with red/white/blue embroidered collar;
7. Navy jacquard velvet blouson and matching ball skirt;
8. "Visit Milan" printed, sequined and crystallized grey and navy striped jersey and navy jacquard velvet track pants;
9. "Visit Milan" printed and crystallized white basketball tricot and matching ball skirt;
10. "Visit London" printed and crystallized white basketball tricot and aquarius
colored hand-painted silk brocade jacquard ballskirt;
11. "Visit New York" printed and crystallized white basketball and aquarius colored cotton satin ballskirt;
12. Floral and coral embroidered black basketball tricot blouson with lupine colored iridescent mikador ball skirt;
13. Floral and coral embroidered black and white striped sequin tropical gown.
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