If you like fashion history and use the Internet as a helpful archive to explore and learn more about old fashion trends, you may have stumbled, during your researches, onto a video entitled Aristocrats of Fashion.
The 10 minute-long film features the latest examples for what regards sport and evening wear from the 40s. The video was originally shot to promote Bemberg’s rayon, so all the looks featured were made in this light fabric.
All the designs included in the video, especially the casual and afternoon ensembles, are characterised by vivid prints - from floral to striped and abstract - and accessorised with matching bags, hats and parasols.
There were some echoes, especially in the prints and colours, from the Aristocrats of Fashion video in Theatre Products’ Autumn/Winter 2010 collection, presented last week at Tokyo Fashion Week.
Birds were one of the main themes of the collection, as proved by the delicate ornithological illustrations printed on silk dresses, trousers and skirts.
Yet a halter neck dress in light aqua green and gaudy floral print dresses and tops matched with veiled hats or headdresses and parasols, definitely belonged to another era.
Indeed, the designers behind this womenswear label founded in 2001, Akira Takeuchi and Tayuka Nakanishi, took a step back into the 40s, then mixed this inspiration with more recent fashion trends from the 60s.
At times this shift between different decades proved fatal, since it caused the collection a certain lack of coherence, yet it was interesting to see how past designs could be given a new and more contemporary twist.
But while Theatre Productions stepped into the past, keeping firmly in mind the universe of theatre musicals that somehow always ends up influencing their designs, Somarta’s Tamae Hirokawa delved into a mythical time and tribally futuristic atmospheres.
The Princess Leia-meets-a ram hairstyle was maybe slightly too distracting, but, if you avoided looking at that and concentrated on the clothes, you would have discovered quite beautiful details when it came to materials, cut and surface elaboration.
This was only natural since Hirokawa belongs to the Issey Miyake school and retains a conceptual approach to fashion, while employing the most advanced textile technologies in Somarta's collections.
Each design could have therefore been analysed from two different points of view: according to a specific tailoring technique used to make it, from draping to folding, ruffling and quilting, and exploring the materials employed (fur and feather trims, lace inserts, brocade and silk to mention a few).
All the creations were matched with shoes with elaborate Rococo heels from which thick furry tails protruded and at times the models carried white leather memento mori skull-shaped handbags covered with leather flowers (slightly reminiscent of Aitor Throup's skull-shaped bags for men).
The final blood red dresses and tribal Amazon-like looks maybe called to mind more Alexander McQueen than Miyake.
It's somehow refreshing to see a young designer integrating so many ideas and elements into one collection, but it will be even more interesting to follow Hirokawa's further experiments with more advanced fabrics and techniques and see what she will come up with in her future collections.


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