As a follow up to yesterday's post about light and technological fabrics, let's look at the shadow theme as tackled by Anrealage's collection during the Parisian catwalk shows.
Considered as a sort of refreshing arty installation or fashion performance by many editors, the show was the Parisian debut for the Japanese label created by Kunihiko Morinaga (who has showed since 2005 in Japan).
The title of the collection - "Shadow" - provided hints towards the actual moods and inspirations revealed in a moment of magic with two models in a simple white dress and a trench coat standing in front of lamps projecting strong lights. The models firmly kept their hands on the garments they were wearing and, when they took them off, there were outlines of their hands imprinted on the dresses thanks to the photosensitive fabrics employed.
The white simple basic and sculptural white garments that followed were at times showcased with black cut out pieces with motifs borrowed from nature (think branches and leaves from a mysterious forest) or from industrial design (grids and circular elements). Once removed these cut out jackets and coats left a shadowy imprint of the pattern on the fabric underneath.
Variation was provided by asymmetric dresses in black and white and delicate coats with intricate broderie anglaise-like techno ruffles matched at times with a laser cut parasol (similar to Lines Lab's Sombra sunbrella), and leather pieces decorated with metallic studs and pearls.
More dresses in photosensitive fabrics closed the show: architectural drawings seemed to appear on some of them when beams of lasers hit the right spots, revealing what may have been an architectural inspiration among the arty chiaroscuro of the rest of the collection.
Though Anrealage's Spring/Summer 2015 collection may be filed under the "environmental garments" label as the pieces were modified by the changes that occurred in the spaces surrounding the wearer, the theme of change and the interplay between light and shadow effects point towards transformative architectures like Jean Nouvel's Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, characterised by a façade that can transform itself when hit by a different setting of lights.
Among other iconic structures that play with the light and shadow themes and the theme of changeability there is the Nakagin Capsule Tower designed by Japanese architect Kurokawa Kisho, a 14-story tower conglomerate of 140 individual detachable and replaceable capsules that function as apartments and business offices.
The cut outs motifs call instead to mind the private villa by a lake designed by architect Alexander Diem in Western Austria, with its distinctive wooden façade with cut-out shapes inspired by the patterns of the region and symbolising food, harvest, and fruit (as the panels are variable and may be kept open or closed as required, the façade offers the possibility to protect one's privacy while creating also variations to the structure).
While this collection may have some links with architecture, it has also got strong connections with the history of fashion as heat-reactive pieces and transformative elements are not new. We have seen heat-activated garments on Alexander Wang's A/W 2014 runway, but, before that, Cinzia Ruggeri used in her Spring/Summer 1982 designs the same trick. In both these cases the designers played with colours, while Anrealage's collection is more based on printing shadows in black on stark white pieces, so it is quite different from the thermo-chromatic experiments we may have seen so far on the runways (though the principle is the same).
Though more minimalist than Wang's, Kunihiko Morinaga's collection should therefore be praised for providing a fresh moment of creativity on the runways by showing the process and the idea behind a collection rather than just the spectacle, while proving that, in future, technology will actually be more wearable, but also more conceptually friendly.
Image credits for this post
Images of Alexander Diem's Villa by the lake © Andreas Balon
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