It is always a pleasure to see young students from fashion design institutions all over the world coming up with original and well-researched collections. Sometimes there are students who offer a very literal interpretation of a specific theme or inspiration and there are also others who show here and there their loyalty to a specific fashion designer or house, but usually creativity prevails in the graduate collections.
Yet it's strange how, a few years after some of these fashion students step over into the real fashion industry, and as soon as they turn from young and inexperienced into trendy designers, creativity becomes infiltrated by echoes of iconic images from the past and this generates a series of déjà vu moments in the industry.
A few quick examples: Tom Ford's rectangular patent leather bag that appears in the Spring/Summer 2013 campaign bears an uncanny resemblance with a design seen on Pierre Cardin's Spring/Summer 2013 menswear runway (that was anyway a re-edition of a previous Cardin design).
Thomas Tait's Autumn/Winter 2013 collection features his “Crazies Sunglasses”, with a black or white asymmetrical frame that calls to mind Pierre Cardin's '60s sunglasses (N.B. Remember: buying anything made by Cardin in the last 25 years is terribly uncool, but copying his past designs is terribly cool).
Christopher Kane's Spring/summer 2014 menswear collection includes jersey and intarsia knits and T-shirts with the motif of a wire mesh head that calls to mind the renderings you may be able to recreate on animation programmes à la Blender.
The origin of this wire model may be the cover and video for Kraftwerk's “Musique Non Stop” with its animation by Rebecca Allen (and bizarrelly enough the collection also features a selection of black and red garments in trademark Kraftwerk style).
The fluorescent green version of the same head in its blown up version that sort of merges with the background, generating a uniform landscape and reproduced on a black background on a coat, tops and shorts calls to mind instead Thierry Mugler's "Anatomique Computer" suit (Autumn/Winter 1990-91 collection).
A very last example is then provided not by a fashion designer, but by an editor, Carine Roitfeld with her "fashion design debut" (or was she just trying her hand at the classic automotive fashion theme?).
According to Vogue.co.uk, the fashion editor "created a dress as part of a collaborative project with Mercedes-Benz", which translated means she "designed" a dress for the S/S 14 car company campaign (shot with artistic direction from Stephan Gan).
There are two elements here: the first image of the car campaign is slightly reminiscent of the Citroën CX TV advertisement featuring Grace Jones with some classic Cheyco Leidmann thrown in.
The second point is the dress-cum-cape: there are hundreds of billowing cape dresses in the history of fashion, but this one seems to be a crossover between Tom Ford (remember Anne Hathaway's dress at "Les Misérables premiere in New York?) and some classic Balenciaga.
Yes, we understand, derivation brings innovation, but why is derivation so prominent in creating today's looks and images? Is it generated by pressure, money or the need to produce something as visually striking as possible in the shortest time as possible? Besides, can derivation bring genuine innovation without real dedication and research?
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