One of the first garment visitors will see upon entering the Max Mara exhibition in Moscow, is a thick brown coat from the late 19th-early 20th century borrowed from the State Historical Museum collections and characterised by a very distinctive silhouette created by a series of pleats at the back.
The pleated motif of this coat made me think about different effects that, cleverly used, can radically transform a garment. One example is this leather quilted coat with a tight-fitting bodice and a padded full skirt from Gianni Versace's Autumn/Winter 1992-93 collection.
Even from a picture you can detect the quality of this piece made for Versace by the Italian company Manifattura Alfredo Motta (actress Jessica Alba stated at the recent NY launch of the Versace for H&M collaboration arriving today in the shops: "I just think it's so cool that every girl can now know what it feels like to wear Versace" - Yes, Jessica, it's absolutely cool, now everybody can own an original "Made in China Versace", but when will ordinary people be able to actually afford the real quality of a designer piece?).
The second example is Yohji Yamamoto's inflatable skirt from the Japanese designer's Spring/Summer 2011 collection.
While the first design is based on a classic technique, the others follow two main principles, that is inverting canons and creating contradictions: Versace came up with a technique that allowed him to pad leather as you would pad light fabric; Yamamoto transformed a simple flotation device into a surreally wearable skirt.
Can you think about other examples of a traditional technique that can be exasperated and exaggerated to create something completely different?
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