Usually trends for the seasons ahead are launched during runway shows and presentations. As Coronavirus reshaped the fashion industry prompting many to cancel shows in favour of digital events (even though at the moment quite a few houses have opted for live catwalks with a reduced audience), many of us started looking at other places for tips about future trends.
Politics and inter-governmental political forums (think about the G7) can nowadays be considered as platforms to spot what may become fashionable in a few months' time: for example, there were quite a few interesting fashion moments in January 2021 during Inauguration Day.
In that occasion, US Vice President Kamala Harris opted for a purple (a colour associated with unity) ensemble by African-American designer Christopher John Rogers and she was already on trend as the designer is currently one of the finalists of the LVMH Prize, which will be announced in September 2021 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
The recipient of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund's Emerging Designer Award in 2020, Christopher John Rogers seems to have moved on from dramatically tiered gowns to create coherent collections based on an in-depth research in textiles and colours.
His S/S 21 collection was an optimistic collection full of childish glee, the result of a combination of his experiments with colours and drawings during last year's lockdown, a palette maybe borrowed from Sesame Street, comprising Ernie and Bert's stripes and a Cookie Monster Blue, the artwork of Catholic Pop Art nun, Sister Corita Kent, and some hints at Stephen Burrows' (see the circles and strips knit dresses from that collection).
For his Resort 2022 collection Rogers continued his journey through colours: his lookbook opens with apple green designs like a desirable reversible cocooning coat with one side covered in dots, breaks into multi-coloured looks with optical patterns and continues with black dresses that open up with geometrical inserts revealing rainbow shades and ensembles reminiscent of Pierrots' costumes again detailed with rainbow piping.
The bold rainbow knitwear offer was particular consistent and included an oversized rainbow chevron merino wool sweater, a godet ribbed knit polo dress in merino wool and a knit T-Shirt dress in 16gg merino wool. These designs seemed to have links with the colourful interior designs of Gerard Grandval.
The architect had a passion for subverting things: he would move from a shell to design prefabricated lodges characterised by sinuous waving shapes or inspired by a yacht's cabin, located in the snowy slopes above the French resort of La Plagne, and was a master in the use of colours.
His house featured stacked colourful soft rainbows, while his youth center Maison de Jeunes in Franconville near Paris (1967-1972) was a novelty, characterised by a colourful facade and built by children assembling its 100 components after school for a week.
These colourful architectures and interior designs are as euphoric and fun as Rogers' knitted striped dresses or optimistic little black dresses with subtle rainbow pleats or technicolor sequin-covered evening gowns.
Rogers has also got a passion for fashion anachronisms: in this lookbook he matched structured bustiers reminiscent of fully boned corsets from the 1700s with striped palazzo pants in silk faille that looked borrowed from the late '60s (besides, quite often the style of his lookbooks is reminiscent of Vogue's photoshoots from the '70s).
The vibrant sense of joy was also clear in the patterns and prints for this collection: previously, Rogers worked with deadstock materials, but for this collection he has turned to producers of sumptuous silk fabrics such as Italian Ratti, manufacturer of luxurious and sustainable textiles since 1945.
The metallic jacquard employed for the exaggerated strawberry skirt - one of Rogers' most successful silhouettes that, borrowed from Haute Couture, has become his signature - was for example woven by Ratti. The same print was adapted for casual suits and a batwing sleeve dropped waist evening gown.
Rogers seems to have started learning how to reduce the voluminous proportions of his previous collections to make his garments more werable, even though he still added an oversized colorblock silk faille version of Balenciaga's iconic babydoll dress in this collection.
While Rogers' shouldn't stop experimenting with voluminous ball gowns, he will have to move on from these Balenciaga references as he doesn't need them, he is indeed more at ease when he turns to interior design and architecture to find his own language and develop his identity.
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