Countless directors tried to depict the scene in which Alice shrinks, grows and metamorphoses in Lewis Carroll's fantastically imaginative novel: some of them turned to clever stage designs that altered the perceptions of Alice's real proportions for the audience, while modern versions of the same scene were enriched by great special effects.
There was certainly the same hallucinatory quality of the shrinking and growing scene from Alice in Wonderland in Anrealage's A/W 19 collection, showcased on Tuesday during Paris Fashion Week.
Yet designer Kunihiko Morinaga didn't really need any special effects for his garments, his tailoring skills and a sharp eye for details were indeed enough for him to come up with unique designs. Leaving behind his previous experiments with lights and shadows, Morinaga focused this time on proportions.
At the back of the runway there were five key garments - a T-shirt, a denim jacket, a trench coat, a shirt and a blazer - displayed on dummies. Were was the peculiarity of this setting? In the size of the dummies and the clothes that came in a cyclop size.
The models on the runway looked as if they had been playing with the magnified clothes behind them and had tried to fashion out of the unusually oversized garments a series of wearable coats, capes and dresses.
Giant collars became lapels with rather unusual proportions; a blazer was turned into a monumental coat with kimono sleeves; a fingerless glove became a sweater; a white shirt sleeve complete with cuff was transformed into a pinafore dress, while giant trousers were refashioned into capes and the sleeve of a bomber jacket was dismembered and used to create a strapless dress with its ribbed cuff forming the bodice.
The effect was uncanny, surreal and cleverly funny in some cases: the coin purse turned handbag was extremely covetable, but so were the woolen sock and the label (with size included) turned into a capelet matched with an apron skirt (fashioned from the magnified waistband of a pair of denim trousers) and a scarf (while a scarf became an ample sweater with a thick fringe...).
Details helped making the collection credible – pin badges dedocrating an oversized biker jacket had the size of plates, zippers and buttons were also exaggerated, but so were the necklaces (some of these pieces were a collaboration with designer "e.m.") and the shiny silver earphones hanging around the neck of a model.
The meaning of the collection was hiding in these details, Morinaga entitled indeed the collection "God is in the Details". Lamenting the fact that we filter fashion via the screens of mobile phones, the designer decided to take images of ordinary and almost banal garments as seen on a mobile phone screen and magnify them at 300% (you can visit Anrealage's Facebook page to look at the garments used as starting points for this collection).
In a way this show was maybe less entertaining than the previous ones that featured mesmerising light effects that radically transformed the garments.
At the same time the collection was surprising as it played well with proportions, shapes, volumes and tailoring, also referencing other experiments on proportions, geometries and the human body that Morinaga did in the past.
Playing with proportions was maybe an expedient inspired by a God of fashion that benevolently watches upon Morinaga and inspires him with ideas suspended between the real and the unreal spheres (the name of the label is a pun of these two words) with some incursions into the surreal (as proved by this collection...).
Will Morinaga's fashion God be so kind as to grant him to win also the 2019 LVMH Prize (Morinaga is among the twenty semifinalists that are going to be reduced to eight finalists after a showroom presentation taking place today and tomorrow at LVMH's Avenue Montaigne headquarters)?
Considering that these prizes too often end up being given to young and inexperienced designers who are considered as hip and trendy, but who do not seem to have great tailoring skills, and the fact that there are a few poseurs, pardon influencers, in the jury as well who may be more interested in watching fashion through their mobile phone screens rather than studying details, it may be (sadly) rather unlikely. Yet maybe it would be better this way, after all Anrealage could be positioned among the conceptually clever timeless brands rather than the hip labels destined to fade away in a few years' time (it is worth remembering that Thomas Tait and Hood by Air, winners of the 2014 LVMH Prize, are no longer producing collections).
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