Apart from proving of being miraculously resistant to the crisis, season after season Haute Couture also proved it is the most resistant section of the fashion industry when it comes to adopting extreme sci-fi trends.
The reason behind this stubborn resistance is very simple: high fashion originates in a world ruled by slow times and private fittings, populated by skilled seamstresses diligently working on each design, in a nutshell a universe that doesn’t seem to go well with the fast pace of technology.
Yet things may change from the Spring/Summer 2011 season as Haute Couture seems to be quickly catching up, ready to jump on the sci-fi bandwagon, pardon, rocket.
Still heavily influenced by architecture and at times falling into the main trap of designers who take architectural inspirations a bit too literally (i.e. an unnecessary rigidity that detracts from the beauty of the designs), Stéphane Rolland moved towards the sci-fi approach.
There was definitely a Things to Come derivation in his designs that mixed a certain classicism with a very strong emphasis on the shoulders, though at times he seemed to turn to Star Wars for his golden armoured jackets à la C3-PO or perilously verged towards Danilo Donati’s costumes for Mike Hodges’ 1980 Flash Gordon especially in his most elaborate designs in metallic colours or covered in golden embroideries (View this photo).
One billowing evening gown (View this photo) also featured a bustier partially trapped in a sort of skeletal cage that, from a distance, looked very similar to an alien creature wrapped around the body of the model.
Having explored futuristic trends in his Autumn/Winter 2010 collection Dutch Jan Taminiau opted for a surrealist approach that still displayed some kind of alien connotations, especially in the body suits covered in silver sequins and gems.
Though his models with their head entirely covered in sequinned masks brought memories of Salvador Dalí’s "Three Young Surrealist Women" and Sheila Legge as a phantom mannequin in Trafalgar Square, the wooden platform shoes and some of the samurai-like designs (though decorated with tapestry-like motifs) evoked the Japanese tradition, calling to mind anonymous Bunraku theatre puppeteers.
In Italy Japanese series such as UFO Robot Goldrake and Mazinger-Z were extremely popular in the early 80s.
There is actually an entire generation of respectable yet nostalgic grown ups still hiding in their attics their beloved plastic robots from the above-mentioned TV series.
Riccardo Tisci is obviously one of them and, while he mentioned as main inspiration for Givenchy’s Haute Couture collection a cultured and refined muse such as Japanese Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, the Philip Treacy “Muteki Robo Toraidaa Gi Sevun-meets-Future Robo Daltanious-meets-The Unchallengeable Daitarn 3” headdresses donned by his models and the vibrant colours – among them neon orange, red, fuchsia, yellow and green – of the architecturally robotic structures decorating the back of his designs and wing-shaped zipper pulls, betrayed the fact that Tisci wasn’t only inspired, but belongs to that precise generation of mecha-anime obsessed Italians.
The collection was mainly based on the hard/soft, delicate/strong, human/robotic dichotomies, so while romantic and delicate motifs such as flowers and cranes (symbols of longevity) on beige and cream laser-cut organza dresses and on layers of chiffon and tulle and post-modernist leather obi sashes called to mind Ohno, the structured three-dimensional colourful elements on the back that seemed to intertwine together crosses and robot heads (hands up who detected the head of Kotetsu Jeeg in the red intricate red appliquéd motifs on one of the designs), detracted maybe a bit from Tisci’s poetical vision.
There were moments when you felt that maybe all the bird and wing references in the ostrich feathers verged more towards the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman than towards traditional Japanese costumes, yet each of these designs, especially the ones covered in tiny pearls and featuring intricate appliquéd motifs, required thousands of hours of handwork each.
At least this collection was extremely less oppressive than his previous one pervaded by the memento mori theme and let's hope that in future Tisci will keep his inspirations along this track (while sparing us at the same time a collection inspired by the oppressive and disturbing moods of Galaxy Express 999…).
The award for the best Haute Couture sci-fi designs for the S/S 2011 season goes to Armani Privé.
Despite most of us thought he was fossilised in a dream of perfect shoulders and powerful silhouettes, King Giorgio suddenly woke up from his Han Solo carbonite hibernation, went to the cinema and, hit by Tron Legacy revelations, opted for iridescent fabrics (most of us would desperately like to know what he put into them to make them look so fluidly shiny… View this photo) and extremely covetable metallic saucer-shaped headdresses by Philip Treacy, very reminiscent of the Grid dwellers’ discs in the latest Tron film.
Interestingly enough, so far fashion borrowed ideas from famous films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars to recreate futuristic atmospheres or looked at Space Age designs from the '60s, a decade when there was naturally more optimism when it came to Space discoveries.
Yet, rather than borrowing from the usual references Armani decided to go his own way, moving maybe from his previous collection inspired by the moon and adding further architectural elements and Oriental motifs, while playing down any kind of undesirable Lady Gaga theatricalities.
Jackets with structured shoulders, skirts and leggings glimmered producing mirror-like effects worth of Tron Legacy’s White-Silver Sirens; 3-D fabrics embossed with triangular patterns, bandeau dresses and cropped jackets covered in iridescent sequins shimmered with their accessories such as necklaces formed by triangular elements and disc-shaped bangles (View this photo), breastplates of coloured stones, fencing masks covered in crystals and rigid Chinese sunhats.
Armani escaped banality employing moulded materials for bodices, incorporating curved silhouettes in his designs and shaping the body in a robotic yet sensual way.
Indeed he was probably trying to reproduce a typical robotic structure when he sliced dresses at the hips, dropped them a few inches putting distance between the skirt and the body and revealed bright shades of green, scarlet or blue.
Techno Orientalist tailoring? Could be a trend. In the meantime, could we have more of those disc-like headpieces?
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
The couture world really got many things to offer. It's design and uniqueness makes me say WOW!
Posted by: men tuxedo | May 09, 2011 at 04:20 AM