The first thing you learn in journalism school is that you must be objective when reporting about something. So, you should just be reporting about the truth, without hiding the facts or adding any personal comments or trying to support or favour this or that party mentioned in your story.
The first thing you learn when you write about fashion is throwing objectivity out of the window and losing your moral integrity. The second step is even more important, though: whenever you see a derivative collection showing strong connections with relatively recent designs, you simply shut about it, though in most cases your memory and brains are already so fried that (since you barely remember what you saw six months ago) it will be simply miraculous if you actually recall what happened a year ago and make the connection.
So it happens that quite a few modern young brands and designers currently pass for geniuses while they're more or less channelling Martin Margiela on their own runways, and most commentators seem to be more interested in avoiding to make comparisons, because it seems more polite and appropriate to do so (besides, this trick guarantees an invitation to the next runway show).
Paris Fashion Week opened for example with Simon Porte Jacquemus, a designer who is widely consired an enfant terrible, though he doesn't seem to have any kind of genuinely revolutionary purposes in his creations, but a penchant for poetry, romance and, well, naivety.
His A/W 16 collection bore many echoes of Margiela: there were indeed scrunched opera gloves, thigh high boots, one-shoulder tops assembled from mens' shirts, plaid garments that looked like made with a blanket and a jacket, back-to-front collared shirt and dresses lifted from the body by an invisible presence cheekily holding their thin straps, that pointed towards a Margiela-meets-Comme des Garçons pastiche.
The flat and gigantic rectangular jackets were clearly Margiela SS 2011, and there was a fascination for silhouettes (read "extreme puffy sleeves") that, rather than fitting the human body, humiliated it in complete J.W. Anderson style.
The giant shoulders and the circular cutouts (the circle is a symbol for this fashion house, in the same way as the circle was a symbol for Pierre Cardin...) were therefore juxtaposed to more wearable pieces including navy, bright blue and white check coats, ribbed turtlenecks, wide pants or trousers with turn ups (pieces you may find also in other brands' collections, so you wonder why these ones are deemed so exclusive by Jacquemus' supporters).
It remained to be explained the reason why one model had lost her shoes and one leg of her trousers, but maybe that was an extreme conceptual moment that could only be grasped by the coolest, hippest and fastest Instagrammers watching the show.
There was a moment of light in a diagonally slashed Gaultier style pinstriped navy suit that was then tied back with white ribbons, but the rest was a bit of a puzzlingly unnecessary exercise in surreal deconstruction, apparently inspired by the idea of throwing a bomb on a trunk of clothes and then letting children play with the remaining bits and pieces. According to the designer, there was another reference to kids: naïve shapes such as squares and circles represent indeed for him a childish obsession (that at times invaded also the accessories, as proved by the shoe heels and abstract kidney-shaped bags).
Elsewhere Koché is attempting to combine Haute Couture and streetwear, even though at times you see in its deconstructed pieces echoes of Margiela's designs and maybe glimpses of its Artisanal line.
That's a shame actually because founder Christelle Kocher has worked in the ateliers of Martine Sitbon, Dries Van Noten and Bottega Veneta and she is also the artistic director of the feather and embroidery house Maison Lemarié (owned by the Chanel subsidiary Paraffection), so her own house hopes to introduce the same high standards of couture houses into streetwear.
Shame the results weren't as strong as they could have been and the coloured feathers on a urban coat ended up looking like one of the repurposing exercises carried out for Margiela's Artisanal line rather than an exclusive moment of streetwear marries Lemarié and they live happily ever after.
Will there be more Margiela-isms at Vêtements? Probably yes. After all fashion works in cycles and the house that Martin built seems to be the house that everybody wants to rent at the moment. Yet this is not the most important question here: the main question is indeed to stop and wonder how can the fashion industry let young and emerging designers grow, develop and find their own path if, rather than looking at their collections critically and objectively we describe them in grand words thinking we are in front of geniuses and iconic designs. Think about it: how many "geniuses" did we produce in the last ten years who had to shut up shop recently because they went bankrupt?
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Hi,
First I apologize for my bad english...
Your blog is really good, your opinions are always very interesting and well argued.
I totally agree with you, what happens a few years now in fashion is really depressing.
I don't understand what happens, everyone is either completely stupid or corrupt (see both).
Nobody has the courage nor culture to expose these frauds.
Personally I'm myself a fashion designer and I teach in one of the great Parisian school, there were attempts to develop critical thinking skills of our students but also their general knowledge.
But it's a very difficult job .
Indeed when students start they love Jacquemus, Vêtements.... but a few months later, after we have demonstrated that their entire collection are only pale copies of existing things ,they change their opinion and they are extremely shocked.
I believe that, this is the prevailing ignorance and hypocrisy of all those people who work in fashion that leads to this abyssal mediocrity.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that there are people like you who have the courage to tell the truth.
Thank you!
Posted by: Mildred | March 03, 2016 at 06:41 PM