![]() So many designers have latched on to the same trends that it has become a kind of intra-industry competition to see who does them best. It was a refreshing collection because it went its own way the designer was unwilling to fall under the spell of fuchsia, cobalt blue, and bright orange. Jacobs’s collection was wholly removed from searing colors, nods to Africa and India, and the sea of techno prints that have dominated the runways for spring. It was a surprising presentation, not because one couldn’t imagine a designer finding inspiration in the world of retro musicals, but because the references were oblique and subtle in a season when they have mostly been obvious and heavy-handed. When Jacobs appeared on stage to take his bows, he was dressed like a latter-day dance master in tight black leggings and a black T-shirt. And they carried little bucket-shaped purses reminiscent of a horse’s feedbag. Tinsel bedecked ‘do rags covered their hair. The dresses were as ethereal as the wing of a moth-cellophane frocks softly tinted with color or opaque sheaths fringed in translucent tabs of organza. They wore pointy metallic pumps with slender straps cutting across the top of the foot. One by one the young models stepped from the tableau vivant to march down the stage and back up again. Creativity is something whimsical and fleeting, their rush seemed to suggest. ![]() As the music revved, the models marched out briskly with a confident stride, as if there was no time to waste. As the curtain parted on his melancholy stage set, his models sat posed on a wooden stage-circular lights glowing in the background-like they had been caught mid-rehearsal in a 1920s-era dance hall. And helping that happen was Elbaz's conviction that "modernity is beauty." Flip that formula, then think for a moment about how simple, timeless, and radical it is.As the spring 2012 shows wrapped up in New York, designer Marc Jacobs called into question all the vivid colors, cacophonous prints, and aggressively chipper collections that had been presented earlier in the week. Here, the desire was more palpable than ever. He's always managed to bridge the gap by making things that women desire. Oppositions are fundamental to Elbaz, the most elementary being the reality of clothes versus the dream of fashion. "I prefer strength." Against which he paraded sheer tulle dresses that conveyed a nothing-to-hide vulnerability. It was a major contributor to the strength of the show, along with those shoulders, which he was quick to point out had nothing to do with eighties padded power dressing. In fact, this might have been the collection where Elbaz truly embraced sex. It was like that with all the slits, too. ![]() It created an urgent, unfinished, spontaneous mood, which was amplified by dresses that had ribbons or pleats pinned to them. One of the challenges he set himself was quite typical: How can a tracksuit work for evening? That's why he mixed the show up, daywear and dressier stuff wantonly intermingled. Lanvin has always been about The Dress, but this time, Elbaz tackled tops and bottoms. And when Karlie Kloss froze at the end of the catwalk in a halo of orange light? Case rests.īut all that aside, what Elbaz offered felt like his own pragmatic take on sportswear. The shoulders that gave the collection its epic silhouette could be the vestiges of wings. Still, if you let your mind go, you could imagine that the snakes coiled in appliqué across a dress or in a print down a pant leg were echoes of Down There. Before the show, he mentioned he had in mind an angel in hell, but as he drew and drew, the angel returned to earth. Alber Elbaz insists that, by the time he's subjected it to his design process, there is almost nothing recognizable left of the story with which he starts each new collection. ![]()
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