Fashion runways are slowly returning to normal, but some presentations are still in the digital format or done via films. London-based New Yorker Michael Halpern opted for a film, for example, to explore the role of ballet dancers in the post-Covid era.
As a child Halpern would visit the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where the New York City Ballet rehearsed. Here he had the chance of falling in love with tutus and costumes. He brought his passion for ballet with him when he moved to London and, during the pandemic he was struck by the dancers in lockdown, posting videos of them training at home in their living rooms and kitchens, at times even learning new choreographies via Zoom.
So, while working on his new collection, Halpern decided to pay homage to all of them with a docu-film in collaboration with the Royal Opera House. Featuring dancers from the ballet company - Fumi Kaneko, Sumina Sasaki, Marianna Tsembenhoi, Leticia Dias, Katharina Nikelski, Céline Gittens, Sae Maeda, and Marcelino Sambé – the film is an ode to the magic of performing arts, a category hit hard by the lockdowns, with theatres and venues being among the last ones to reopen all over the world.
This is not the first time Halpern turns to a docu-film: glam may have been on his mind since he graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2016, but, while he has a penchant for bespoke and dreamy demi-couture pieces, Halpern is very much in touch with reality.
During the pandemic Halpern volunteered in a London factory that produced PPE and his S/S 21 collection was indeed accompanied by a documentary in which eight frontline women workers - including a nurse, a hospital cleaner and a train operator - modelled his glamorous looks while talking about their jobs and their roles during the pandemic.
Halpern's new collection retains all the passion the designer has got for exuberant gowns: the new collection features sequined suits, liquid draped satin gowns and body-con dresses; tiered tulle confections, ruffled gowns, long tutus with silk bodices and cocoon dresses covered in feathers.
One spherical dress with a structure of Swarovski crystals filled with multicolored feathers is a vision out of a crazy and modern version of "The Nutcracker", while his fringed dresses evoke sound or sensorial suits à la Nick Cave and are built using coloured strings attached by hand. The designer makes by hand many of these pieces and his passion for hand-made processes is paying: his bespoke business is going from strength to strength and online and couture orders are increasing.
You can bet this collection will help him going stellar as the video and the lookbook really manage to bring the designs to another level: filmed and photographed in an empty Royal Opera House, the gowns seem liberated from gravity, as the dancers jump in the air, stand en pointe or engage in a pas de deux, and the fabrics of the designs fly, while the embellishments on the garments shine under the lights.
Movement is the key to understand this collection that features both practical silhouettes and soft fabrics reminiscent of Halston's deceitfully simple but actually ingeniously constructed creations, but also more constricting dresses, like the bubble-shaped ones or the bondage laced up dress that allow the designer to study how the human body adapts to constrictions just like we all had to adapt to the pandemic.
Halpern has understood two things: first that filling your eyes with beauty is the trick that can keep you alive even in the most adverse of times. In this case he shows us that demi-couture can make us dream, just like ballet, that's why they are a perfect combination.
The second and most important point is the narrative behind the collection. Since Covid-19 struck, many fashion designers realized that the industry can do much more than just garments. Fashion has always been able to tell stories and Halpern has understood that consumers nowadays don’t want just beautiful clothes, they also want a story that accompanies them, a powerful narrative that doesn’t necessarily focus on models, runways, front rows, celebrities and high-profile influencers, but that looks at ordinary people, clothes and the roles of fashion and costumes in real lives. By letting other people speak through his docu-films, Halpern creates a new narrative, reaching out to fashion fans, but also to people who may not be interested in fashion.
And if one day he will leave fashion behind to focus on costumes, well, it will be a loss for the fashion industry, but it will definitely be a gain for the world of performing arts as you can bet he will take his glamour and ebullient joie de vivre to the stage.
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