There's different kinds of spectacles in fashion: one day you may see a runway in which gimmicks are more important than clothes; another you may end up in a show in which who's sitting in the front row is supposed to accessorise the garments on the runway like a bag or a pair of shoes.
Then there are the contemplative shows that make you think, such as Anrealage's.
Designer Kunihiko Morinaga often opts for scientific, high-tech solutions that prompt people to ponder a bit more about the power of behavioural garments, the illusions produced by fashion and the possibility of instantly morphing what we wear without changing ourselves, providing in this way different aspects of our identities.
Showcased during Paris Fashion Week, Anrealage's A/W 18 collection opened with three models entering the triangle-shaped arena surrounded by blinding LED lights.
They were wearing what looked like glow-in-the-dark raincoats that wouldn't have looked out of place in Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049.
Yet, as the lights changed and then went off and the models turned around like ballerinas in a music box, the coats revealed as transparent as Schiaparelli's "cape de verre".
Entitled "Prism" Anrealage's collection celebrated the power of this transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light.
The collection then continued with shirts decorated with PVC ruffled bibs matched with skirts in black or gray or with trousers covered in a triangular pattern evoking the trademark triangular base of prisms and trench coats in a bubble wrap-style textile.
Checks and houndstooth patterns had a 3D quality about them thanks to a special coating in a film with a multi-ocular lens effect that split the image into multiple ones.
The all-white looks calling to mind the power of Space Age actually featured triangles that changed colour when hit by the lights of the venue.
Geometry prevailed also in the final pretty and minimalist dresses in which the designer reinvented the traditional patchwork technique.
Apart from the patchwork technique, crafts were represented by down to earth designs such as ample prism jumpers that seemed to be made with multicoloured assemblages of triangle-shaped elements matched with minimalist yet iridescent long skirts.
Prisms also inspired the tailoring techniques behind the collection: prisms can be used to reflect light, but also to split light into components with different polarizations. That was the inspiration behind the jackets that recombined together two or three types of outerwear and that seemed dissected, split and then zippered back together with fan-like motifs.
Most designs were matched with Onitsuka Tiger x Anrealage sneakers, a sort of sci-fi version of the brand's iconic Mexico 66 shoes, integrating a newly developed prism textile in the upper that develops different colours depending on the position of the light source and the viewing angle.
There was one further secret in these garments: they truly acted like prisms as the colours didn't just depend on the lights as it happened in previous Anrealage's collections, but by the perspective, intensity and quality of the light source.
Kunihiko Morinaga created intriguing games of lights and shadows in previous collections thanks to photosensitive fabrics and photonic-crystal fibers. This time he opted for inventive ways to tackle the issue of diversity of perception and remind us that, in the digital age, what we see is often not what we get.
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