Garments we wear on an everyday basis can at times become more controversial and unpredictable than what's on the runway. Want some recent examples?
Temperatures soared past 30C this week in many countries all over Europe and, while the menswear shows were taking place in Paris this week, in Nantes six French male bus drivers working in the heatwave responded to their company's ban on shorts by turning up in skirts in protest. After all, as a union representative stated, it is a form of discrimination if women can wear skirts and men can't do the same.
In more or less the same fashion (pun totally intended), at a school in Exeter, England, young boys who had been told by their headmaster that, despite the high temperatures, they had to wear long trousers rather than shorts but, if they wanted, they could have worn skirts (the headmaster was being sarcastic here...), turned up on Thursday in nice and short tartan skirts.
Comme des Garçons' Rei Kawakubo must have enjoyed hearing these stories, after all she always loved men in skirts, but for her S/S 18 menswear collection she turned her back on skirts while retaining the fun moods.
The menswear show took place at the Salle Wagram, but, rather than opting for a conventional runway, Kawakubo went for a raised stage bathed in multi-coloured disco lights. Loud music did the rest, setting the tone for Kawakubo's terrifically optimistic uniform.
Rather than skirts, her models donned glittery basketball shorts that had in some cases clownish silhouettes. The shorts were matched with ample or elongated jackets in a collage of fabrics: floral textiles were combined with leopard spotted and ladybug dotted fake fur bits and pieces; brocade seemed to be glued to velvet.
Kawakubo dubbed the collection "What's on the Inside Matters" and, if you looked more closely you understood what she meant. Most jackets displayed indeed the inner labels on the outside and, when some models opened them, you realised that the designs were worn inside out. Or maybe that was just a clever optical illusion and the pieces were constructed to be worn like that.
A couple of jackets that seemed to be covered with a crocheted tablecloth reinforced this suspicion, and that was when you realised that innovation is clearly still possible through such tailoring tricks and not through some copying exercises.
Towards the end of the show there were also jackets covered in bits and pieces of dolls of the kind you may see in the windows of a historical doll hospital in Italy. Prints representing assemblages of dolls and textile elements were also replicated on shirts.
These pieces were actually collaborations with sculptor, textile artist and jewellery designer Mona Luison.
Initially working as a jeweller (under the name Tetsko), a while back Luison started developing wearable sculptures that she makes by upcycling all sorts of materials such as old clothes, coffee cups, tiny toys, ephemera and assorted found objects. The results are surprising hybrid items suspended between art pieces, crafts and fashion accessories, always inspired by a sense of joy and playfulness and often evoking childhood.
More recently Luison became known for her enigmatic and at times disquieting fabric creatures with their heads locked in plastic domes.
Kawakubo must have liked Luison's freedom of creation and her use of a broad variety and type of materials. Choosing Luison, Kawakubo joined the list of fashion designers, including Fendi and Yohji Yamamoto, who teamed up with a female artist for a menswear collection. In a way it made sense also because Comme des Garçons' Homme collections often feature pieces that young men and women alike can relate to.
There was another (more comercial) collaboration on the CdG runway, pardon, CdG dancefloor, that materialised as colourful Nike Air Max 180 sneakers.
Slightly disoriented by the lack of incredibly conceptual messages, nobody in the audience stood up to dance, but maybe that's what Kawakubo would have wanted. The doubt remains, but the final message here was definitely clear: rather than stealing and recreating the fashion of the raves, we should recover their spirit and the exuberance and freedom of those times.
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