London Bridge is Falling Down
London Fashion Week wrapped on Monday, and, frankly, I wasn’t sad about it. After New York’s raucous showing—replete with color, embroidery, embellishments, feathers, and texture—London was a bit of a letdown.
Palettes were muddy and uninspired—sigh, McQueen, usually one of my favorites—and the silhouettes just didn’t snap or feel that fresh. Where New York felt like one great American resort collection writ large, London merely looked like it could use a vacation. Two of the few bright spots? Erdem and Simone Rocha.
Erdem Moralioglu? A swinging success. Appropriate, his collection an ode to the ’20s and ’30s American-born gender-bending trapeze artist Barbette. Drawing from Man Ray’s photographs of Barbette, Erdem, like New York’s designers, played with embellishment and proportion. Trapeze-inspired leotards sparkled, floating down the runway adorned with ostrich feathers, beading, sequins, and tulle. Erdem’s couture take on cirque.
Dresses featured exaggerated proportions, hips flaring just below the waist, silhouettes that harkened back to the boning and crinolines of yore. Overall? The entire display a feast for the eyes.
Simone Rocha was another matter. I loved the collection overall.
But what was missing for me? Rocha referenced Caravaggio, and perhaps I’m being too literal, but invoke Caravaggio, and I’m going looking for chiaroscuro. The extraordinary manipulation of light and shadow is part of his magic. Rocha gave us the blood-red draping, the darkness, the religious undertones, cocoon-swathed models, but I kept waiting for the play of light and shadow… and it just wasn’t there. Caravaggio without the light? To me it’s Hamlet without the prince.
If the drama wasn’t coming from light and shadow, it was certainly coming from the clothes. Rocha ventured boldly into ruffles, embellishments, sequins, and sheer fabrics that swayed as models walked. Silhouettes were bold—a mix of body con and swinging skirts.
And whereas London’s bridge seemed a little bogged down, Milan was a flood of inspiration.
Prada? I have no words. Well, maybe a few.
Prada’s runway was a 63-look love letter to The Skirt. 63 iterations of the skirt. 64 if you include the one Miuccia herself wore. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons at their best.
In the show notes?
“The skirt as object... Engineered for freedom, the skirt is a Prada obsession.”
And now? My obsession as well. Prada and Simons took a simple object—the skirt—and made it the object of our attention. Skirts swung around models’ calves. Skirts were cut above the knee. They pleated. They split. They were embellished. Soaked in saturated color, some carried pattern; others stood solid.
Perhaps that was the lesson Milan offered after London: freshness doesn’t require reinvention. Sometimes it requires looking at the familiar differently.
Prada took one ancient, ordinary garment—a garment that undoubtedly appears multiple times in our own closets—and demonstrated that the object itself isn’t exhausted. Change proportion, fabrication, movement, color, embellishment, and suddenly there are 63 arguments about what a skirt can be.
One object → 63 outcomes.
The simplest object can feel completely new when the thinking around it is fresh.
And perhaps that’s Prada’s real trick: paring back the top, primarily a combination of bras, bandeaus, and black sweaters, and, rather than prescribing a complete look, giving us the freedom to finish the thought.
So I started thinking about my own closet.
What if the next great outfit is not hanging in a store somewhere or waiting on a website?
What if it’s actually sitting in your closet all this time, ten feet away from you?
Take your favorite pair of jeans. The ones you always wear the same way. Change the proportion around them. Cuff them. Change your shoe. Instead of a flat? Try a kitten heel. Loop a sweater around your neck. Tie a scarf at the waist. That Guest in Residence Wild Rag we’ve been eyeing? Just perfect. Add a brightly colored sock and slip on a loafer.
One object. New outcome.
Release her from her cocoon and let her spread her wings.