In 1938, almost foreseeing the destruction that was to follow, Elsa Schiaparelli, in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, came up with an evening dress characterised by a surreal print. The silk crêpe gown (originally pale blue, even though now it appears to be off-white) was completed by a flowing, matching veil and long pink gloves that mimicked exposed skin (and that's another surreal element – the gloves looked like the skin, but, actually, they protected it…).
The printed pattern represented trompe-l'oeil tears, with a black tongue seemingly peeling off to reveal a pink layer. The accompanying head-scarf was genuinely torn, but also revealed underneath a layer of Schiaparelli's distinctive shocking pink.
Critics for years speculated on the gown's meaning: was the designer alluding to an attack on the wearer's body or on the garment itself? Did it symbolize torn fabric or a wounded body? Could it be considered as an artistic assault or an early precursor to punk fashion?
Answers remained elusive, but one certainty persisted: the distinctive print was a marginal design in Schiaparelli's output during that era.
Throughout the '90s Alexander McQueen shocked the fashion media and attracted hostile coverage with shows that featured instead bruised and battered models (graduate show, March 1993), models wearing clothes streaked with tyre marks as if they had been driven over ("The Birds", S/S 95), or wearing torn and tattered clothes as if they had been assaulted or raped ("Highland Rape", A/W 1995–96 and "Widows of Culloden", A/W 2006-7).
Called a misogynist, McQueen explained he actually wanted women to look stronger (besides, the torn lace and tartan in his collections also referenced to the eighteenth-century Jacobite Risings and the nineteenth-century Highland Clearances). If in the '90s McQueen was attacked for his ripped and torn dresses, you may also guess why Schiap's evening gown, combining an impression of vulnerability, violation and violence, didn't go down that well.
Yet, behind Schiap's gown there was a strong surreal intent borrowed from Salvador Dalí's paintings such as "Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra", "Necrophiliac Springtime" and "Dreams Puts Her Hand on a Man's Shoulder" (all from 1936).
The first one features three figures, one of them in a white dress covered in cuts that resemble torn skin; the second painting includes a figure wearing a dress with cuts up the sleeves and the third one features a woman in rags.
The volume "Shocking: The Surreal World of Elsa Schiaparelli" (Thames & Hudson) traces back in these paintings with their bodily illusions, the main inspirations for Schiap's gown. Like the woman in the torn dress in "Three Young Surrealist Women", the tears on Schiaparelli's dress call to mind flayed skin, an element that gives Schiaparelli and Dalí's print a horrifying yet beautiful twist.
But torn clothes were a sort of trend also among other painters at the time: there are, for example, slashes around the elbow and the forearm of Leonor Fini's jacket in "Self-Portrait with a Scorpion" (1938).
Fast-forward to our times to discover Viktor & Rolf who, in their S/S 24 Haute Couture collection, recently showcased in Paris, resurrected the ripped and torn trend with a series of designs showcasing a progressive deterioration, going from pristine to destroyed.
The torn aesthetic, reminiscent of Schiaparelli's vision, prompted reflections on destruction, reinvention, and a potential shift in fashion's purpose.
The design duo shares with Schiap a passion for surreal and humorous designs, but in this collection, entitled "Viktor & Rolf Scissorhands", the duo's best friend must have been a pair of scissors.
The new collection featured elegant evening gowns and tuxedos in black, a colour they already experimented with (think about their black Autumn-Winter 2001-02 collection very aptly entitled "Black Hole").
There were 28 looks in the show, but essentially it was more like watching seven mini-shows with seven looks that showed their gradual destruction, going from a stately coat to a tiered ruffle dress, passing through grand tulle confections borrowed from their archives; each garment was followed by the ripped and destroyed version of the same design.
At first there were just a few tears, then the garments were savaged to the point that they revealed their structure underneath.
There were designs that looked more similar to the concept behind Schiap's dress, yet all the cuts here were real rather than trompe l'oeil.
There were also designs that pointed at previous collections, the final tulle gowns, for instance, evoked memories of V&R's S/S 10 collection with its ballgowns in which holes or tunnels had been drilled or with entire parts missing "woman sawed in half"/Roberto Capucci style.
Cut by a mad tailor and reinvented by the design duo, the collection may have actually been turned into a more entertaining option if it had been presented live and the cuts would have been made on the spot (maybe even by randomly chosen guests invited to the show for an aura of unpredictability...).
Maybe the designers were trying to go beyond fashion, using the slashes and tears like Lucio Fontana used his cuts, to reach another dimension located beyond the canvas.
Yet, while this may have been the main intent (or maybe there was a punk will behind this gesture), the collection invited contemplation as in some cases models resembled survivors of disasters, raising questions about appropriateness in a world surrounded by conflicts.
Designers start working on their collections several months in advance, so V&R's vision was probably created before the Israel-Gaza conflict that started last October, yet the choice to present themes of chaos and deconstruction via destruction during tumultuous times raises eyebrows.
Though it may not have been their intent to go down the "disaster survivor couture" path and showcase the effects of the war or of a nuclear bomb on humanity and on clothes (hopefully, nobody will opt for these looks at the Oscars ceremony where "Oppenheimer" is among the nominated films…), quite often, as consumers we tend to project on a collection or an advertising campaign our thoughts and moods, that at times are influenced by what's going on in the world (think about the backlash received by a recent Zara campaign), so the "destroyed" theme, obviously borrowed from Schiap, should have been saved for another time.
The chilling downside of this collection? Well, as stated above, Schiap's torn dress ended up being a moniker of the sorrows that were to follow a few years later. So, does V&R's S/S 24 Haute Couture collection unlock more terror and looming threats? Does it highlight impending dangers and foresee another world war? Hopefully not, let's just hope it's a contemplation on construction, destruction, survival, and the evolving narrative of fashion.
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