Andreea Diaconu at Christian Dior haute couture s/s 2012
3.1 Phillip Lim f/w 2013
Shortly before the start of the 3.1 Phillip Lim show today, a man came out and splashed some kind of fluid around the catwalk. It seemed plausible—if only for a moment—that the fluid was kerosene and that the man was going to light the Lim runway on fire. Not only would an inferno have been dangerous and thrilling, but it would have been fitting, too: This was a collection with a scorched-earth attitude. Lim’s inspiration this season was bikers, or more specifically and rather weirdly, girlfriends of bikers, and he abstracted that theme into a general air of menace. There were lots of literal references to biker aesthetics here—a preponderance of leather, patch-covered denim, and moto jackets, vests, sweatshirts, and even dresses. The most interesting pieces in this show saw Lim interpreting his theme more liberally and conjuring a kind of shrugged-on, to-hell-with-it errant-ness.
- Maya Singer
Yves Saint Laurent menswear f/w 2012
Stefano Pilati’s last menswear show for Yves Saint Laurent focused on power’s fashion-friendly handmaidens: sex and money. Pilati managed to weave his themes into the heritage of the house. Back in the days when sex ruled the underground, it was, according to Pilati, more powerful than money. Now there’s no more underground, but there are still photos of Saint Laurent in the seventies, looking and feeling transgressive in his big black coat. So that was where Pilati took his collection.
The setting he created was the place where sex and money came to play—the art world. A huge Twombly-esque chalkboard backdrop was actually a smudgy transcript of a Warhol interview. The staticky electronica of Scanner on the soundtrack was collaged with art-world legend Sam Wagstaff discussing the mechanics of collecting. And the style of Wagstaff’s boyfriend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, slowly insinuated itself into the show.
- Tim Blanks
Prada menswear f/w 2013
The word “normal” stands out there. These were, on the whole, distinctly normal clothes, worn in a distinctly casual way by distinctly normal young men, with a few recognizable professionals and some older faces thrown in for good measure. “Normality can be provocative,” Miuccia insisted. “Banality is the reality of life. I don’t like a fantasy about life.” But don’t forget that this “normality,” in all its checked-shirt-camel-coated innocence, had been studiously crafted by highly sophisticated minds. There was an element of signature Prada perversity in that.
-Tim Blanks
Chanel haute couture s/s 2013
Karl Lagerfeld can’t move mountains just yet. Today, he had to settle for a mere forest, shipped into the Grand Palais tree by tree. His guests wandered through the woods till they happened upon a classical amphitheater. “Neo-classical,” Karl clarified. He was dreaming of Weimar, sylvan hub of German Romanticism in the late eighteenth century, home to Goethe and Schiller. Connoisseurs of synchronicity might appreciate the fact that one of Schiller’s best-known plays was Mary Stuart.
Beautiful as the collection was—and ending as it did with two brides, the designer’s poke at the gay-marriage controversy currently roiling France—its most striking feature was its melancholic mood. This wasn’t so much one for the Karlettes, Lagerfeld’s coterie of young female fans. “Art de vivre, not joie de vivre, ” Lagerfeld agreed.
-Tim Blanks
