Coronavirus dramatically transformed our lives, confining us to our countries, our states, regions, towns and homes. The pandemic reversed our private spaces into public spaces, transforming bedrooms into classrooms, kitchen tables into office desks, loungewear into office-wear.
In the fashion industry everything has changed, from the way we see a collection to the way we present clothes and accessories and buy them. It is as if everything went topsy-turvy, something that also had an impact on the delicate balance of our minds that, shattered by the anxieties of the pandemic, reassembled following new and endless rhythms and routines made of lockdowns and brief moments of freedom.
Anrealage explored the concept of this topsy-turvy world in its presentation for the brand's A/W 21 collection, interpreting the historical moment we are living in as an inversion between the ground and the sky, a tale of opposites between what was usual and became unusual and vice versa.
The simple runway was therefore built upside down with the row of seats rearranged over the head of the models, while the lights that usually hang from the ceiling were installed on the ground.
The configuration of the show hinted at the fact that the traditional runway lost something when fashion weeks went digital, it is indeed as things went flat for Anrealage's designer Kunihiko Morinaga and gravity and mass disappeared. So, shaking up the runway as if he were shaking a snow globe, Morinaga attempted to bring back the weight of fashion on the runway, while symbolizing our current condition.
Having lost the ground that usually keeps us grounded, models were therefore anchored to the ceiling. But reversing the runway wasn't enough for Anrealage: the Japanese fashion house has always been crossing boundaries mixing together different elements and pushing the boundaries, so the textile patterns of the clothes and the hair of the models – reconfigured into radiant punk wigs by Tomihiro Kono – were also subjected to the rules of gravity.
In some cases Morinaga showed a look in the normal position and then in a gravity defying configuration and it became clearer that, when worn upside down, some things went through dramatic yet extremely ironic and fun changes.
Polka dots, checks and houndstooth prints on voluminous coats and star and flowers motifs on jackets scattered and moved towards the shoulders; Argyle patterns on knits were vigorously shaken and tumbled towards the shoulder area as well.
One knit featured a tree with apples that floated in the sky, defying Newton's laws. Pockets on denim jackets were also reconfigured, while ruffles were, well, ruffled and hems appeared upside down, toggles on duffle coats lost their symmetry, jeans were folded back on themselves and velvet dresses presented reconfigured and retransformed silhouettes, with the collar and sleeves hanging around the legs. Even the text on the labels and the washing instructions lost its perfect layout in favour of an imperfect chaos that reshuffled letters and sentences.
Wigs attached to tulle masks also went through a radical transformation: some models donned a perfect bowl cut, but their twins came out in wigs that mimicked the effect you may get while standing on your head against a wall, an effect inspired by science and in particular by static electricity.
The hair on the wigs - in shades of wisteria, peach, lemon and pink, sky blue and silvery grey, jet black and burnt orange - exploded recreating electrified halos around the head of the models in a clever game of subversion perfectly interpreted by the Japanese architect of wigs and headdresses, Tomihiro Kono.
For the finale the models came out walking on the ceiling all together, an eerie effect suspended between bats and astronauts floating around, dancing in the absence of gravity.
This was a moment of clever fun and craziness, but of reflection as well: Morinaga seems to tell us that, until the topsy-turvy state in which we are now currently living is not reshaken back, we may as well embrace it.
So this show wasn't just another clever exercise à la Anrealage, it was an attempt at finding new rules and functions in fashion and giving new meanings to clothes to make them relevant again: to this end half the collection was made with fabrics with antiviral properties, as if Morinaga was suggesting us that we may have to try and live in a world where another pandemic may come, but a world in which even exceptional and conceptual clothes may be functional.
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