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Moving Toward the Main Arena

28.01.10

Junior men, we know, have challenged women as serious consumers of fashion, but here’s an intriguing interview as the fall ready-to-wear season moves to New York: Can designers of women’s clothes juxtapose the men’s designers here in creativity?

Men’s wear has in great measure been a domain of tailors and tradition. Jean Paul Gaultier ’s “men in skirts” opened the door to feminization. In the 1990s Helmut Lang let flee relax a sexual tension that was transmitted in part through his idiosyncratic fit. More recently, Thom Browne has attempted to rework notions of masculinity by forcing extreme — and darned disturbing — proportions.

Yet, radical or not, these changes have been viewed as something casing fashion’s main arena, which is women’s blueprint. Also, men’s designers remain besotted by traditional elements, like the Donegal tweeds and leather flasks dangling from belts this mature in Kim Jones’s confident collection for Dunhill, or the unexcited velvets and scarves at Hermès. And at a time when many aspects of fashionable life feel unreliable, heritage brands make a degree of security. If it’s a Sherlock cloak you delusive or a needle-thin banker’s suit, go to John Galliano .

Source: New York Times

Putting Clothes in Context

22.01.10

The American creator Adam Kimmel’s first show on live models, inspired by and in collaboration with the artist George Condo, was a lofty kickoff to the Paris menswear season. The vitality and cleverness of the men’s shows is all about embedding the clothes in a context.

The Comme des Garçons show on Friday reflected the terrible world we live in — hence the bulky bulletproof vests shabby under suits and the open-front culottes, sometimes buckled like kilts, on top of the pants.

“Charge,” said the enigmatic Rei Kawakubo. And though this show did not have the punch of Comme’s army blanket core of a year ago, there still was something powerfully contemporary in the use of layering and of sturdy fabrics like corduroy and drab plaids. Thick textures also included a wrap skirt in clip. The kilt and the skirt are re-emerging since their 1980s popularity. But this Comme solicitation was resolutely masculine, even with pink socks lining the strapping shoes.

Source: New York Times

The Nifty 50 | Ohne Titel, Designers

27.01.10

“We both relish macramé, crochet, all those crafts,” says Adams. She was taught to sew by her grandmother and grew up listening to stories about her outstanding-grandfather, who was Al Capone’s tailor. Gill’s love of forge is similarly deep-seated: as an 8-year-old, she was so enamored of Rei Kawakubo that her parents bought her a book about Comme des Garçons.

“We come to what we want to wear,” Adams continues. “I preference that there’s not this outside woman that we’re trying to live up to. It’s more personal than that.”

“We would never after our customer to try to fit into some imaginary ideal,” Gill agrees. “We stand in want our clothes to fit into her personality and her strengths.”

It’s a sentiment that’s nicely illustrated in the matched set’s spring ad campaign, due out next month. Its central image features the octogenarian Boston socialite Marilyn Riseman, who favors kabuki makeup and jet-iniquitous hair, and the statuesque artist Tauba Auerbach, both wearing Ohne Titel. The two are posed as though for a relations portrait, so that you could imagine them as an exceptionally cool grandmother and granddaughter — who straight happen to shop at the same designer.

Source: New York Times (blog)