From: New designers turn to nudity to make a splash at Paris Fashion Week
Washington Post - 2 days ago
Robin Givhan
New designers turn to nudity to make a splash at Paris Fashion Week
The critic at the Washington Post
may not have this care
but women who can afford to pay the most
rarely look appealing if too bare.
So when they want to be appreciated
off the run way, in a fun way,
and use fashion to help passion
it would be better understated.
hzl
1/6/15
Tiny, naked breasts coming down the runway. The models were so close to the audience that one could see the fine hairs on their slender arms, as well as the goosebumps. Even when the models faces were concealed, it was possible to read discomfort in their taut body language.
Everything about the mis-en-scene and the references read “art.” Jacquemus aimed to use the female body in the manner of paint or clay. He wanted to make his audience see it in a new way. But there was little in the execution that elevated the work from anatomy lesson to something more thoughtful or evocative. In this case, a naked breast was just a naked breast.
Jacquemus gave himself a difficult, though not impossible, task. Designer Hussein Chalayan has used runway nudity as a commentary on clothing as shelter. Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons regularly treats the body as raw materials for her craft. And notably, in 2002, the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited a series of exquisite nudes photographed by Irving Penn from 1949-1950. In them, he transformed the female body into meditations on lines and curves, fertility and beauty. The images mesmerized the eye because they spoke to both the heart and the brain.
Jacquemus is not aiming to be Penn, but he, like a lot of designers, is attempting to use fashion as a way of helping us see ourselves in a different way. The easiest way to do that — some might argue the cheapest route — is to reveal the body in a manner that is still considered taboo. Can we change the rules by breaking them? Yes. Even when done so clumsily? Maybe not.
Designer Anthony Vaccarello also flouts taboos. He cuts his dresses high on the hip and low in the neckline. And for fall, he chopped some skirts so short that one could almost see the models’ nether regions.
Vaccarello, who was recently appointed creative director of Versus — a scion of the Versace label — is known for designing sexy, tough-edged clothes. They are ostensibly for a woman who wears her sexuality like armor or weaponry. For fall, he settled on a theme of stars against a palette of black. They were applied to skirts and dresses as appliqué and metallic adornment. Hemlines were edged in metal fringe. And cuts were angled and oftentimes so complicated that a single garment consisted of a one-legged, skirt-covered, jumpsuit tunic. And if that sounds complicated to imagine, it would be almost impossible to comfortably wear.
But the runway doesn’t have to be about comfort or even logic. Ultimately, it is a place to explore ideas about how we wish to be perceived. Vaccarello designs clothes that make a woman’s sexuality the central element of her public persona. Sometimes that squares with her mood.
He should just remember that gynecology is not part of fashion........
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