Kansas barns and electric chairs certainly do not conjure up visions of cool fashion runways. They are indeed nightmares out of news stories like the one that inspired Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, revolving around the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock.
Yet during New York Fashion Week barns and electric chairs were integrated into the setting for Raf Simons' Calvin Klein A/W 18 men and women's wear collections.
Though threatening and sinisters, the barns (inspired by this season's campaign shot by photographer Willy Vanderperre) and the images that decorated them showing electric chairs and assorted disasters courtesy of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (Calvin Klein has currently got an ongoing partnership with it), were actually meant to conjure up a surreal film set. The cinematic connection was also clear in the gallons of popcorn that invaded the runway, giving the illusion the models were walking through snow.
The show, that took place at the former American Stock Exchange, opened and closed with reinvented orange workwear jackets. In some cases the safety gear was turned into billowing coats, in others the functional jackets became a cropped shirt while the hi-vis bands were integrated into shearling coats.
Outerwear for both men and women was characterised by ample and voluminous silhouettes, reminiscent at times of David Byrne's giant gray suit from the Talking Heads' 1984 live movie Stop Making Sense.
The designs were mainly accessorised with balaclavas: usually associated with terror, the head pieces lost all their negative connotations as they looked homemade and mainly came in pastel colours.
In a few cases rather than looking threatening, the headpieces evoked Bonnie Cashin's (no, not again, please...) hooded turtlenecks and the emphasis on orange workwear also seemed to evoke Kenneth Paul Block's 1974 illustration of a model in a tangerine dress by Cashin.
Looks were layered so that overcoats hid long skirts or dresses, often matched with elbow-length gloves.
Prairie dresses à la Laura Ingalls Wilder or gowns from the American Civil War times, like the ones donned by Sofia Coppola's "The Beguiled" murderous schoolgirls and women, were given a touch of perversion, as they were recreated in sheer fabrics or with cut-out sections that left the models' breasts exposed.
Rubber boots were also given a dichotomic value as they could have been interpreted as functional safety footwear or as fetishistic accessories.
Bags in Warhol's trademark colours with prints of his "Death and Disaster" series also made a new appearance (Simons used them already in Calvin Klein's previous collection), the dark and macabre prints contrasting with the popcorn bags (printed with Calvin Klein ads) that many of the models clutched to their chests.
Two-tone cowboy-inspired button-down shirts and placket trousers trousers from previous seasons also made an appearance, while playful touches were added via knits that seemed to incorporate glitches or that reproduced homespun images of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
More crafts appeared via the designs inspired by American quilting patterns, including white shirts and evening gowns, they were new versions of the creations seen in previous Raf Simons for Calvin Klein collections.
These designs could also be interpreted as reassuring: quilts do have a protective power and quite often charity organisations and volunteers make quilts for people in need. In this case they represented hope in a hallucinatory dystopia.
More optimism arrived towards the end of the show when the balaclavas took another shape: they became silver astro hoods, the sort of headgear that became popular in the '60s, inspired by the joys of space travel.
The optimism of a new Space Age that we glimpsed just a few weeks ago through the launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, was evoked by the silvery tubes protruding from the barns, while the silver foil dresses were references to Mylar survival blankets (Todd Haynes's 1995 "Safe" film was another cinematic inspiration for this collection) and to Andy Warhols' 1966 "Silver Clouds" installation.
The latter, first installed in 1966 at New York's Leo Castelli Gallery, was actually recreated in Calvin Klein's 654 Madison Avenue flagship for the joy of the New York Fashion Week fashionistas (in this case the "silver clouds" were printed with images from Warhol's "Death and Disaster" series and with his portraits of Dennis Hopper and Sandra Brant)
You could read between the third part of Raf Simons' trilogy for Calvin Klein and find a lot of hidden meanings in it.
The show, that ended up being the best one in a rather dull edition of New York Fashion Week, could be interpreted for example as a disturbing take on Hollywood with all the dark sex abuse scandals that have eclipsed its glossy glamour (in this case the models clutching popcorn turned the audience into the spectacle).
But the show, entitled "Landscapes", was first and foremost a multi-layered vision of America as it is now, a land of dystopia in which it is too difficult to distinguish between the fake and the genuine, the nightmare and the nightmarish reality.
Besides, this collection was also Simons' post-modernist reflection on appropriation as he reworked Western shirts, Civil War attire, firefighters gear, American crafts and films in a fantasy set partially conjured up with the help of artist (and Simons collaborator) Sterling Ruby.
One thing made you think, though: when Andy Warhol launched his silver baloons, he stated "Since I didn't want to paint anymore, I thought […] that I could give that up and do the movies. And then I thought that there must be a way that I have to finish it off, and I thought the only way is to make a painting that floats." Surely, this is not a metaphor for Simons not wanting to create fashion anymore, but this Warhol reference prompts you to ponder.
The designer's experiments with the Americana glossary have so far worked pretty well and revenues have been going up since he arrived at the label. Yet his modus operandi, his will to combine art, interior design and fashion, makes you suspect that one day Simons will leave the fashion stage to pursue other, more arty and conceptual dreams. Till then and till he remains at Calvin Klein, though, he will probably keep on being the most intense designer showing in New York.
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