There are different reasons why a film may acquire cult status and become memorable - from an impeccably told plot to the main characters, the set, costumes or locations.
"Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" (1981) directed by Uli Edel didn't maybe have incredible costumes, glamorous settings or special effects, it was indeed a gritty portrayal of the drug scene in West Berlin in the late 1970s, but managed to achieve throughout the decade a strong cult status, turning into an inspiration for many artists out there.
Based on the eponymous non-fiction book that was written from the tape recordings of teenage girl Christiane F., the film followed 13-year-old Christiane Felscherinow (Natja Brunckhorst) into her descent into drug hell.
Bored with living an ordinary life with her mother and younger sister in a small flat in a social-housing building in a dull neighbourhood of West Berlin, Christiane starts hanging around a local club called Sound with a friend.
Soon she starts taking LSD and moves onto heroin when she falls in love with a boy named Detlef (Thomas Haustein). They soon become dependent from each other and addicted to heroin: Christiane starts spending time in the Bahnhof Zoo, a train and subway station known for drug trafficking and prostitution and begins prostituting herself like Detlef, who sells sex to male clients to buy drugs.
There is nothing glamorous or to be filed under the "heroin chic" category in the film: the scenes in which Christiane and Detlef go cold turkey are extremely painful and rather disgusting; the way Christiane falls deeper and deeper into desperation is mind-shattering while the deaths of young people succumbing to heroin overdoses are heart-rendering.
The cinematography is bleak and dreary: there are realistic details of drug addiction with Christiane and friends sharing needles and losing consciousness in lavatory cubicles amidst urine, vomit and blood, or cleaning a needle in the toilet bowl; flats and seedy toilets are turned into shooting galleries and the film includes scenes shot at the railway station and at the Sound club that featured actual junkies and prostitutes.
The movie is dedicated to three friends of Christiane who died of overdose - Andreas W., Babsi (the youngest victim of heroin in the film) and Lufo F.
Christiane F. achieved cult status for its shocking story tinged with an edge of coolness by David Bowie's cameo (Christiane goes to see one of his gigs) and his soundtrack (featuring music he made during his Berlin period, between 1976 and 1977).
In the fashion world Christiane F. reappeared in January 2016 when Glen Luchford directed a Gucci ad for the S/S 16 campaign.
One of the scenes from the early part of the film, with a group of teenagers running away from the police after breaking a shop window and climbing on top of a building, was reinvented in the Gucci advert with a group of young people, obviously clad in glamorous Gucci clothes to give them an aura of chic and a healthy dose of "librarian on acid" glamour, running in a shopping centre.
Christiane F. came back last week on the men's runways in New York: the story was indeed recreated on Raf Simon's catwalk.
Models walked around piles of fruit, vegetables, breads, salami and cheeses, grapes and lemons peeled into twists, half-empty bottles of wine and decadently lavish floral arrangements, references maybe to Flemish still-life paintings by the Old Masters.
The show opened with boxy tailored coats, most of them reversible and revealing a silk lining in contrasting shades covered in ample utility pockets. The latter were also replicated on trousers and smart jackets.
Most coats and suits were also matched with deconstructed turtleneck jumpers left hanging at the neck like rather useless dead appendages.
The reference to Christiane F. materialised in the prints with the faces of Natja Brunckhorst as Christiane F. and Thomas Haustein as Detlef replicated on patches decorating sweatshirts, trousers and coats, in Raf Simons' graphic style.
In other cases the patches decorating scarves and knee pads came in bright and bold colours with simple messages on them – names of drugs including LSD, XCT, GHB, and 2C-B. Two sliced hoodies also featured the word "DRUGS", a reference to the mid-1980s play by Cookie Mueller and Glenn O'Brien. The colours of the sweats hinted at the covers of the book reprinted in 2016 by The Kingsboro Press & For The Common Good.
Most designs were matched with white rubber boots and elbow-high fetish vinyl gloves decorated with rectangular smartphone-like bracelets (or boxes maybe?) and the collection was suspended in a game of juxtapositions between ample silhouettes matched with skinny pants and refined tailoring and utilitarian moods.
You could try and read a lot of things between the lines of this collection that Simons called "Youth in Motion": the inspiration came from the fact that the book and the film were part of the curriculum when Simons was in high school, as the press notes explained.
The film was enough to put him off the idea of doing drugs, but, at the same time, fascinated him for the self-destructive behaviour of its extremely young characters. So this could be for Simons a step into his past and into his identity.
Besides the theme helped bringing a wider issue – the opioid epidemic in the States – on the runways, and this is not mean feat. In a previous collection for Calvin Klein Simons explored the American horror theme, so this could be interpreted as another part of that horror story, but maybe with a positive twist (even though it is difficult to imagine that a sweat with Christiane's face or with the word "DRUGS" will open up a dialogue about addiction...).
Simons explained indeed that some of the proceeds from the sale of the collection will go to organisations supporting addiction recovery (while food from the presentation went to a New York City food bank, City Harvest).
The actual meaning of the collection was explained in the show notes that highlighted how the collection did not seek to "glorify nor condone the culture(s) of drugs," stating that "Simons seeks instead to consider the persistent, almost ubiquitous presence of narcotics (prescribed or otherwise) within our society and acknowledge our often conflicted relationships with them; in turn opening up a more nuanced dialogue around the implications for a society where addiction and the causes of addiction remain largely taboo subjects, with – as both Christiane F. and the current opioid crisis demonstrate – often untold human consequences."
Yet there is something that makes you think: the collection may be judged controversial on a human level, especially when we consider that the real Christiane never managed to win her battle with addiction. In a way it feels as if intentions were well meaning, but the delivery was slightly dubious.
Fashion-wise the film also appeared in a previous Simons collection, A/W 2001's "Riot Riot Riot!" (at the time the film poster was recombined with flyers for Joy Division concerts and images of Manic Street Preachers' missing band member Richey Edwards), but this is not the first time Simons recycles a past idea for new designs, as seen in the S/S 18 collection.
Yet all this exercise in reusing the past makes you think and that's when the sense of sadness and melancholy from the film invests and pervades fashion, prompting you to wonder if there are no more themes to explore, no more statements to make and no more cults to invent. In a nutshell, maybe everything has already been said and done, but it's bizarre to see past cults resisting and our times not being able to produce some genuinely previously unseen ideas. Maybe it is about time to stop the relentless production of fashion collections and go into detox.
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