There are times when I wish I could just get in touch with dead designers and ask them what they think of the people leading the fashion houses they founded.
Do they like how their businesses are being run at the moment? Would they run them in the same way if they were alive today and do they like the garments created by the designers who have replaced them?
What a shame these questions are destined to remain unanswered.
Yet, I think that, in many ways, you can probably guess what some of the late designers may be thinking about the fashion houses they left behind.
For example, the ghost of Pierre Balmain is probably feeling rather miserable at the moment.
Mind you, he should be happy as, after seasons of seeing on his runway thin rock chicks clad in sharp shoulder jackets, he finally saw punk chicks in studded leather and denim jackets, definitely an improvement towards, well, banality.
I guess that somebody should maybe remind Christophe Decarnin that fashion consists in selling clothes by generating desire and a pile of safety pins pierced leather jackets, corsets, trousers and shorts matched with ripped, stained, paint splattered and burnt T-shirts accessorised with padlocked chains (can’t you come up with something unseen and slightly more original? You work for a Parisian fashion house after all…) doesn’t usually get the consumers running to the clothes shops, though it inspires most of them to rush to their local hardware store.
Pierre Balman's house was known for its high standards of perfection, quality and innovation (anybody remembers Cyd Charisse’s glamorous design in 1962’s film Two Weeks in Another Town, the one with feathery sleeves that could come off and be folded like a fan? Well, that was a Balmain design and that was adventurous and much more punkish than a pile of safety pins...), things that Balmain's S/S 11 collection (vaguely inspired by Malcolm McLaren's death?) desperately lacked.
We should thank Decarnin for reminding us that buying fewer clothes is the key to a happier life: come next Spring we will all take out of our wardrobes the punk sweater held together by safety pins that we used to wear when we were 16 and we never threw out and we will all be fashionably happy.
Balenciaga also opted for a hard edge, with a collection introduced by a group of models with punk hairdos and biker boots, but, at least, Nicolas Ghesquière did try to introduce some new elements by doing his little research on new effects that can be achieved on different fabrics.
Cristóbal Balenciaga loved black, white, brilliant reds and turquoise, shades Ghesquière effortlessly used in this collection in which he transformed Balenciaga’s heritage pied de coq into a sort of plasticised graphic and almost cartoonish houndstooth (thinking maybe about the Spanish designer mainly working with firm materials and treating them as if he were a sculptor) using this fabric for cocooning coats, rigid vests and mini-skirts.
Ghesquière
curved some silhouettes, going for an
intricately-cut simplicity in some cases and adding more hard
edges via punched out collars and belts and cracking textures in others.
Femininity was reintroduced with sequinned sweaters and one-shoulder dresses or by reinventing Zika Ascher's fluffy bouclé mohair in a sort of houndstooth printed mohair.
Boyish moods prevailed though, especially in the cropped
black trousers matched with light patchworked mens’ shirts with a
white insert that formed a sort of armoured plate around the chest area.
The white armour theme also appeared in the last few white and navy shift dresses that, looking rather futuristic (though they seemed to retain some derivation from Balenciaga's Star Wars/Han Solo designs from the fashion house's Spring/Summer 2007 collection), showed how the craftsmanship of haute couture could be taken to a new level thanks to advanced techniques such as laser cutting.
Balenciaga's S/S 11 collection presented a tough vision in which haute couture, street trends and menswear met, clashed and combined: the soft knee-high almond-shaped toe boots that in the heydays of the French fashion house Vogue described as “transcendental wellingtons”, turned for example in this collection into biker boots and thick-soled shoes in iridescent colours.
In his heydays Balenciaga destroyed the time element, creating pieces that could be worn even today, not caring about trends because he followed his own ideas.
As a whole this was another successful collection for Nicolas Ghesquière, but it's easy to wonder how long these designs will last in our memory and in the wardrobes of those people wealthy enough to buy them. After all, while Cristóbal Balenciaga truly introduced innovation, Ghesquière is building on his heritage in innovative ways.
Will that be enough to guarantee him a solid place in fashion history? Time will tell, but, in the meantime, could somebody please lock Christophe Decarnin in the Balmain archive and forget about him for at least six months? Guess that spending some time studying a bit of fashion history/theory wouldn't hurt him...
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Add to Technorati Favorites
Lijit Search
Comments