One of the pictures in yesterday's post showed a puppet from John M Blundall's collection dressed like a sailor. The puppet has a patch on one eye, a wooden leg and a violin, and you get the feeling that, if he ever started playing, he would recount in ballad-form incredible stories from his adventures at sea.
This sailor puppet easily comes to mind when seeing Sarah Burton's Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection for Alexander McQueen. Showcased yesterday afternoon during London Collections: Men, the designs on the runway moved from one main inspiration - Victorian sailors.
During the reign of Queen Victoria, Britain had the largest navy and mercantile marine that the world had ever seen. The sailors who manned these ships became folk heroes, the custodians of Nelson's tradition and the protagonists of strange tales from across the seas.
Authors and artists exploited the popularity of the sailor image, something that disguised in a way the reality of a sailor's hard life. The same could be maybe said about this collection since the garments included ain't "slops" (the cheap clothings sold to sailors by the purser aboard naval vessels before the introduction of uniforms).
Burton transformed nautical Victoriana opting indeed for a sort of dandified sailor: formal officers' coats and traditional peacoats prevailed (though the latter were renovated by adding white buttons up the wrists or large grommets) at the beginning of the collection, but quirky trompe l'oeil medals and epaulettes on pajama-like suits were then introduced for a surrealist touch, while jumpers with delicate wave-like ruffles were a nod to femininity.
Prints of Victorian maps with fantastic sea monsters, vintage images of men engaged in Greco-Roman wrestling and nautical tattoos added a new layer to the designs. Rather than pointing at the current tattoo madness, Burton's compasses, mermaids, and anchors told a different story about this art.
In Victorian times tattoo parlours were indeed a common feature: this craft was actually intended as a way to reject Victoran principles of moral beauty, and display a passion for exoticism as incarnated by tattoo artists such as George 'Professor' Burchett, also known as the "King of Tattooists".
Burchett joined the Royal Navy at 13, developed his tattooing skills while travelling overseas as a deckhand on the HMS Vincent and, after he returned to England, trained in this craft with English tattooists Tom Riley and Sutherland MacDonald.
A star tattooist with the wealthy upper class and European royalty (including the 'Sailor King' George V of the United Kingdom), Burchett constantly designed new tattoos inspired by his worldwide travels, incorporating African, Japanese and Southeast Asian motifs into his work.
Burton added delicate exotic tattoos around the lapels of a white cotton coat, on the details of duster coats and trenches, on shirt cuffs and collars. Rather than vulgar (as many modern tattoos we sadly see around...), Burton's looked exotic, though at times slightly reminiscent of Elsa Schiaparelli's early designs and hand-knitted sweaters with sailor's tattoos (an idea that returned many decades later in Jean Paul Gaultier's collections).
Frayed denim pieces also hinted at well-worn clothes (during a long voyage?) and, though flaring trousers and cropped pants were reminiscent of the '70s, the suits patterned in dazzle ship camouflage reshifted the collection from Victorian times to the First World War.
In a way it felt Burton was exploring another branch of the military forces: having focused for the A/W 2015-16 collection on the First World War, the seaborne branch of the military seemed to give her the chance to reinterpret and lighten up an otherwise formal theme.
Enthusiastic fashionistas ready to shout "Hurray for the life of a sailor!" and embark on this trend may instead try and restrain themselves for a while: the menswear season has just started and who knows what other surprises we may find at the next port of call.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments