The term identity is a crucial word in fashion: it may refer to the DNA imprint given to a historical house by its founder; it may hint at the background, experiences and passions of a specific designer or to the artisanal traditions of a country infused in a collection, while it could also reference the way certain garments contribute to shape the identity of the wearer (think about uniforms).
In modern fashion, identity is a relative concept, especially when you think about the many historical fashion houses founded a long time ago that have been led by different Creative Directors after the original designers died or the houses were sold. New and younger designers have been indeed reinventing and relaunching these houses, but the results haven't always been successful or convincing.
Since Raf Simons left Dior, studio directors Serge Ruffieux and Lucie Meier worked on the Haute Couture and the A/W 2016 collections at the historical French maison.
The duo mainly continued along the modernist lines Simons dictated, coming up with lean silhouettes, a reinvented Bar jacket here and a softer and less structured jacket there, usually matched with high-waisted pencil skirts.
There were a few intriguing dresses, some in a floral print were inspired by a Christian Dior print of ice cream, but the mood was maybe a bit too frilly when it came to dresses. Quite a few of them featured indeed mixes of fabrics that created disturbances in the cohesiveness of the designs (at times these mixes of fabrics worked, see the X texture on a coat or the print hiding under a side-slit skirt), even though you could see that the skills where there in the gathered sleeves, and asymmetrical hems.
Coats and knitwear represented the strongest parts of the collection: there were mink-collared coats, jackets with soft draped motifs at the collars, portrait neckline details and an orange knitted top with leg-of-mutton sleeves that clearly proved you can join the trend for crazy sleeves without looking like a character out a Comedia dell'Arte play.
Black was the main shade of the collection, and solid fabrics were juxtaposed to softer ones that allowed to create fluid printed dresses. Accessories included modernist ear cuffs, but bags distracted since at times models carried too many of them or looked as if they had left their bags carelessly opened to reveal the crafted innards.
Though the collection wasn't bad, the focus of the front row wasn't on the clothes but on who will be next at the helm of the house. Besides, while the designs bore echoes of Dior's identity, Meier and Ruffieux seemed too scared to let their skills truly emerge, after all, when you're not sure about your status, when you're not too certain of how far you'll be allowed to go, you restrain yourself.
Meier and Ruffieux's creative vision was too similar to Simons's, but maybe that's what they were asked to do while the house finds a new Creative Director.
From their point of view this is rather sad, since this collection felt like a transitional one, and you got the impression they will be forgotten when the next director is announced.
Elsewhere at Lanvin, there was more or less the same identity crisis: you may have loved or hated Alber Elbaz's vision, but had least it had some energy and a cohesive direction.
Lanvin's A/W 16 collection was as energetic as a deflated soufflé. The house's owner Shaw-Lan Wang may have been proudly watching, but Lanvin's exuberance was more or less moribund if not dead.
The '80s prevailed in the stiff brocades and lace collaged blouses and dresses in pastel colours; the palette progressed from peach and soft greens to mauve and black, but, though sensual, the mood was Dynasty-meets-Shirley Conran's Lace, but without the sex.
Chemena Kamali and Lucio Finale, who oversaw women's ready-to-wear and accessories, really struggled to come up with a coherent post-Elbaz vision: there may have been some convincing points here and there in the black patent trench coats with chiffon frills, the black brocade tuxedo jacket with be-jewelled lapels, and the gem-encrusted chokers and crystal earrings, but the collection looked like a badly styled jumbled assortment of garments.
The most dubious thing about the entire collection was the fit, though: at times the garments looked too rigid, at others they looked simply ill-fitting, and while there were a couple of attempts at recreating Lanvin's dramatically puffed silhouettes, the results were devastatingly bad and devoid of the supposed "euphoria" mentioned in the show notes.
It seems that the runway is no place for identity statements for the designers currently working for such historical fashion houses transitioning from one director to the next. Rather than identity there is therefore "just fashion" represented by the (salable or improbable) clothes on the runway. Scarily, echoes of the opening monologue from Wim Wenders' 1989 documentary Notebook on Cities and Clothes come to your mind "…the idea of identity finds itself in such a feeble state. Identity is out, out of fashion (…) Then what is in vogue, if not fashion itself? By definition, fashion is always in. Identity and fashion, are the two contradictory?”
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