If you work in a creative industry, finding your inspiration and developing it in a coherent way can be a tricky affair. Fashion designers for example often end up in the trap of translating a specific inspiration in a very literal way or in multiplying one idea, producing maybe too many garments. The result in this case is usually an unnecessarily long collection and, despite the raving reviews, this was what happened with Christopher Kane, who was probably trying to prove his new owners he's not one trick pony like many other British designers.
The first collection since François-Henri Pinault's PPR bought a majority stake in the young designer's label, Kane's Autumn/Winter 2013-14 should be interpreted not from the first look on the runway to the last one, but in the other way round.
The last looks featured indeed embroidered images of brain scans and an MRI scan printed on a dress. This was indeed Kane's main inspiration - the way the brain works - a theme that has been tackled by designers every now and then, even in knitwear, even though Kane's main aim was looking at how the brain worked when hit by creativity.
The collection featured at some point also delicate dresses in elaborate swirling Guipure lace matched with silver collars and bags (imagine a darker ready-to-wear version of Valentino's elaborate S/S 13 Haute Couture looks - View this photo).
These motifs could almost be read again as minimalist and graphic transpositions of a brain scan, while velvet dresses and coats held togther with stitching (not pictured in thsi post) were probably references to assembled human/inhuman bodies à la Frankenstein, a theme already tackled by Kane in his previous collections.
Yet the brain theme didn't really appear in the dresses trimmed with feathers, or in the punk mini-dresses that left the midriff bare and in the kilts (Scotland entered the collection also via the leather kilt closures employed on the skirts and on coats as well) in a green or deep blue metallic camouflage print (unless you interpret the camouflage print as an abstract brain scan).
In the same way, while tulle dresses covered in curled up feathers and feathery flowers, dresses formed by see-through rectangular patches overimposed one on the other to form a sort of deconstructed construction and evening looks heavily embellished with beads were desirable, they somehow looked not directly connected to the brain scan theme, that, if explored a bit better, would have maybe led Kane to a new path of discovery, allowing him to think also about R.D. Laing, the very creative Scottish psychiatrist.
It is obviously possible to justify specific choices: by adding garments such as boxy coats and fox fur collars Kane was tapping into a more mature and luxurious market, but the number of looks definitely caused some moments of creative schizophrenia (besides, what's the point of adding a fur collar/trim here and there when there are equally young designers in other countries experimenting with fur in more original ways, though they are not getting the same raving reviews Kane gets...).
From a historical point of view Kane is an interesting phenomenon to analyse: like many other young fashion designers he more or less consistently uses the same shapes especially when it comes to midriff baring dresses and inverted cupcake skirts, but, raher than pointing this out, critics justify these looks as "trademarks" or as a young designer rediscovering his heritage and archive, even though we all know that young/heritage/archive are concepts that do not go well together for obvious reasons.
Mind you, as Kane told most journalists, the brain works in mysterious ways, and so does the fashion industry and at the moment the Scottish designer is a star and an amazing genius for most critics - even when he just adds a feather trim to a very basic dress.
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Your mind creativity & intellectual creation very commendable to focusing on array lines of fashion in which ruching designs of robes.Your deeds are very notable.
Posted by: fashion collection | February 20, 2013 at 05:36 AM