New York Fashion Week officially begins today, even though it sort of kicked off yesterday. Most articles about it mainly mention the fact that Rodarte and Proenza Schouler decamped to Paris in July in time for the Haute Couture season; Thom Browne announced he was also moving to Paris, and was followed by Altuzarra and Lacoste. Yet maybe the real focus of the current articles about fashion weeks should be the integrity of the collections.
Tom Ford returned to New York where he showed his collection yesterday evening. The designer has displayed a rather confused attitude to fashion in the last year or so: maybe divided between a career as a film director (shooting movies that critics file under the category "arty/polished/stylish", and that ordinary people label as "unsufferably pretentious"; well, critics can go wrong…), worried about the competition in Paris, bored about Milan and unhappy about the results he was getting in London, last September he adopted the "see-now-buy-now" model, abandoning it in March this year, stating he was also going to move his women's atelier from London to Los Angeles.
Blinded by glamour and by the sweet gift of Ford's new fragrance – "Fucking Fabulous" – (used as invitation to the show) the few critics left out there saw fearless and fierce glamour on the runway. Actually there was some glamour in the tailored menswear jackets with super padded squarish shoulders and in the evening gowns, but nothing looked new.
The tuxedo jackets reeeked of Yves Saint Laurent's "Le smoking", the draped evening gowns with square shoulders may have been Adrian costumes, or borrowed from a Joan Crawford film filtered via Joan Collins's wardrobe with just a touch of Balenciaga's S/S 2009 collection (see the four image in this post, the gown on the right, then View this photo). The splashes of fuchsia and acid lemon echoed Margiela's A/W 2007 collection (that also featured garments with squarish shoulders), while the hip flashing swimsuits matched with low pants echoed visions from the '90s.
There were denim looks that introduced the casual luxury theme, but nothing really moved, even though one design reshifted the attention to borrowed and remixed clothes. The design in question was an orange leather trouser suit with black profiles in an orange shade that seemed vaguely reminiscent of Michael Jackson's attire in the "Thriller" video (infused with some Dapper Dan moods View this photo).
Ford has never been extremely original and quite often his ideas have been lifted from other eras and times and reinvented, revamped and revomited with a patina of glamour added. Yesterday's collection recombined together his vocabulary with irrelevant results, without representing anything new and incredibly innovative.
Don't despair, though, there's still time to find something new and exciting in the Big Apple: there are currently over 130 shows on the NYFW schedule. In the meantime, maybe Ford could spray his "Fucking Fabulous" fragrance around to cover the traces and the stink of copycat zombies.
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