Hate it or love it, you can't deny that fashion offers something that other disciplines may not give you – the chance to analyse it from various points of view, from the merely superficial to the creative, the arty, anthropological, political, financial, global and sociological.
In a way fashion is similar to a sun from which different topics radiate: you could indeed just focus on the clothes and moods seen at a runway show or analyse them taking into consideration the artworks and films they reference or, in a wider way, the historical context in which they were developed.
Drenched in an American Horror Story mood, Marc Jacobs' A/W 2016 runway reflected for example one main point – it is not just his own label and the fashion industry in general that are going through a transitional phase, but it's America.
As the restructuring and integration stages progress after the Marc by Marc Jacobs line closed down, and while designers are currently trying and find a way to renew the concept of the runway show while increasing sales, the race for the next American president is heating up and, in many ways, all these themes came together in Jacobs' collection.
The latter was showcased during New York Fashion Week in a white circular room created inside the Park Avenue Armory. This white-washed madhouse gave models the chance to walk in a circle creating through their gargantuan coats and platform boots dramatically huge shadows, while an eerie soundtrack inspired by the Japanese artist Keiji Haino played in the background.
Dark and doomed moods prevailed: models were engulfed in voluminously gigantic coats and jackets that covered ample sweaters with crocheted doily collars or pussybow blouses matched with ballooning vinyl skirts lasered with motifs that called to mind broderie anglaise.
At times fur jackets, tweed coats and dresses were made using a variety of textures collaged together in a Frankenstein-monster style; a denim jacket was decorated with a glittery cobweb and a patch showing Mickey Mouse with an evil expression on its face, and silhouettes were elongated to monstrous proportions.
Raven feathers sprouted from the back of jackets, while prints of cats, rats (a reference maybe to one of Jacobs' secondary lines in the early and mid-noughties, Stinky Rat, derived from a nickname given to the designer by Juergen Tellers' daughter Lola), crows and ballerinas, were courtesy of artist Stephen Tashjian, known for his drag queen character Tabboo!
All the looks were matched with perilously high platform boots and shoes, half Bowie and half Gene Simmons, and accessories included bags in chequered fur or ostrich leather.
If you didn't get too distracted by the Edward Gorey-like gloominess, you could actually spot ideas from previous collections being recycled in this one: the spliced band-concert sweatshirts from Spring 2016 were reinvented in darker versions; the perforated leather flowers of Resort 2016 were turned into laser cut vinyl skirts; the Yayoi Kusama/Louis Vuitton spotified collaboration from 2012 and Marc Jacobs' A/W 2011 polka dots became larger black or white dots; Marc Jacobs' yellow and white chequered looks for Louis Vuitton's S/S 13 collection were turned into tattered grey and black chequered jumpers or purple and black fur grids, while some of the fabrics for his coats called to mind the William Morris fabrics in Marc by Marc Jacobs' A/W 2015-16 collection.
This was the other side of last season's light and fun show: some looks were reinvented, redesigned as gigantic constructions, painted in strong dark shades with a few variations added, including dark green, pale pink and strong fuchsia and donned by eccentric characters with black eyes and lips.
Among them there was also Lady Gaga, who became the focus of many reviews and stole the show in a cumbersome grey coat with fur sleeves and a pussy-bow blouse. Gaga has so far been associated with many fashion designers and brands (McQueen, Versace, Mugler and Tom Ford), but this is the most recent "collaboration" with Jacobs after the designer outfitted Lady Gaga's Bowie tribute at the Grammy awards.
As a whole the collection was a great cauldron proving Jacobs has always been a great stylist rather than an impeccable designer, capable of mixing together various influences. In this case, Jacobs combined in a giantly fashionable Creepypasta Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams, Lydia out of Beetlejuice, dark Victoriana as seen in Penny Dreadful, neo-Goths and Little Monsters, Comme des Garçons' oversized garments and Art Deco (see the surface elaborations on the fabrics, the embellishments on some of the gowns and the waving hairstyles...), New York ghosts, the maniacal madness of a world gone crazy à la Stonehearst Asylum, and the scary tales of American Horror Story. This long fairytale closed with a Gothic Alice turned dark Queen in a checkerboard cloak.
It's only natural to wonder if through his new collection Jacobs was maybe hinting that he will move into a Haute Couture narrative: the ballerinas and caged birds embroidered on a jacket and those shocking pink accessories (not to mention the stripy looks) pointed towards Schiaparelli (but then again there were elements reminiscent of Schiap also in the S/S 16 collection) while the dramatically elongated coats and capes evoked the magnitude of high fashion and the grandeur of Parisian ateliers.
Time will tell, in the meantime Jacobs finished off this dark affair by taking his bow in a suit and a customised glittering "Made for History" tee featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's face and revealing the political edge of an otherwise gothic fiction show.
The Hillary Clinton campaign just launched "Made for History", a limited-edition collection of T-shirts (retailing for $45 on Clinton's website) designed in collaboration with Marc Jacobs, Tory Burch (the rainbow coloured "Women's Rights are Human Rights") and Dao-Yi Chow & Mazwell Osborne's Public School (the "Make Herstory" design). Jacob's design features an image of Clinton's face in red, white and blue.
"My support for Hillary is grounded on our long-standing shared belief in equality," Jacobs states on Clinton's site. "I am proud to share this T-shirt as a champion for equal rights, for the progress we have made, and for the hope of continued progress with Hillary as President."
The fashion industry supported Obama's election and re-election with two different initiatives, "Runway to Change" (2008) and "Runway to Win" (2012), and they have now moved on to support Hillary Clinton, hoping to open a brand new chapter in America's story and in the story for women's equality.
Jacobs has closed in an entertainingly dark way an otherwise dull and flat New York Fashion Week that revealed a lack of revolutionary and radical ideas and a widespread fashion fatigue, but that left us with the see now-buy now items of the season - the political T-shirts.
As stated, the designer was wearing his Hillary tee when he took his bow, but so was Anna Wintour dressed in bold shades of red, white, and blue in the front row.
Unsure about your candidate? As an alternative you can opt for Bernie Sanders's tee deigned by Shepard Fairey, the street artist and activist behind the "Hope" design used during Obama's presidential run in 2008. Looks like the run for the 2016 US Presidential race is turning into a battle of the shirts: fashion may be transitioning towards another era, but so is politics...
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