If you’d like a background on couture and why it’s worth a look, check out this post before reading on!
Just like that, the Fall 2019 Haute Couture Week has come and gone – but it hasn’t left us empty-handed. Like any good fashion week, over the span of a few days and many presentations, themes began to emerge. I’m not referring to trends, but to something deeper, big ideas, big “what ifs”. Good art asks questions, and without a doubt, we’ve seen a lot of good art this week.
These “questions” I’m referring to aren’t whether or not dad sneakers are still in or if we should all run out and buy square-toed sandals (although if you’re wondering, yes and yes). These designers are asking, whether intentionally or otherwise, Big Questions, like what does it mean to identify as a women? and is gender relevant anymore? or is there space for silliness in our culture?
The Big Takeaway Question from Fall 2019 Haute Couture
The big theme that spoke to me was that of growth and transformation. After all, the main cultures represented in fashion weeks (mainly European, some Middle Eastern and Chinese) are oriented towards growth and change in the name of progress. Progress, what a amorphous term, no? And yet it’s something most of us strive for.
How do we get from point A to point B? What are we looking for in growth? Is it peace, is it freedom, is it wonder, is it innovation? What. Are. We. Looking. For?
This brings me to my major takeaway from the week – we’re in a moment when we’d like nothing more than to transform. To what, and how, remain to be seen.
In Part I of the Fall 2019 Haute Couture Week Review, we’ll talk about Guo Pei and Iris Van Herpen. I’m including selected photos, but also videos of their shows – it’s worth watching the clothes in motion and with music, trust me.
Shall we?
Guo Pei
I’m not going into a ton of detail with Guo Pei today – she’s getting her own post, because her show was just that good.
Takes Us Up
Her show was all about moving into different spiritual states of being – in her words, the show moved us into an “alternate universe.” Models walked through an archway covered in crows at the Beaux-Arts in Paris to instrumental music that was at once industrious, magical, and regal. The suggestion that we were being brought past death into something new, an afterlife no one had imagined before, is thick in this imagery.
The tones of cream used throughout the collection create a sense of peace and a backdrop for the blue, black, and gold embroidered images of creatures, both real and imagined. It is at once ethereal and cerebral, harmonious – with few exceptions – and intriguing.
Feathers throughout remind us that we were once earthbound, adding to the impression that we’re really among something heavenly.
And Brings Us Down
Then, Pei brings us back to Earth, with branches, beetles, and white foliage, a sort of couture diorama (in the best way) of life. There are hints of color, like it’s just starting to be reborn.
The finale dress is an explosion of green, yellow, and marigold. It’s unabashedly alive, blasting us with color and hundreds of tiny buds and leaves.
But then there’s the reminder that we’re still not separate from that divine universe – the dress is backed with a cream train, like a cloud stuck on the model’s back, and a black crow rests on her hand. It also didn’t escape me, or other reviewers, that the dress itself comes around the model in the shape of a bed.
Or a coffin.
We know we’ve been transformed, but how is up to you. Have we started in death, transcended to some peaceful other realm, only to descend to Earth and live again? Or is that finale dress a bed, and we’re waking up from a blissed-out dream? Or still, is it showing us that life and death are inseparable, and that transformation is an illusion? Up to you.
Iris Van Herpen
Iris Van Herpen has proven to be one to watch. And after all she’s shown us, how could you look away? She has the singular ability to combine the savviest technology, like 3D printing, heat-bonding Mylar, and laser cutting, with the most elemental experiences of living on Earth.
This collection, entitled “Hypnosis,” cycled us through just that – the elements of air, land, and water. Alongside Anthony Howe, an American kinetic sculptor, she created garments that do indeed resemble the elements. But they also move, as if they had a life of their own. They don’t sit on the body the way normal clothes do; rather, they move around the body as the wearer moves.
Some of the dresses actually have a mechanical element – with motion or wind, parts of them move, hence the involvement of kinetic sculptor Howe. He also created the magnificent arch over the runway, which in an outdoor, windy setting, would move on it’s own but was mechanized to adapt to the very not windy setting of the venue.
When still, the patterns on the pieces are in complete harmony. When the model moves, however, these patterns are broken, vibrating in and out of sync with each movement. It conjures images of a person disrupting a pool of water, or tilling the land. One can’t help but think that she is alluding to human’s interactions with the environment. Can we exist without disruption? Is it inherent to our being, or can we move in harmony with it?
Hypnosis Therapy
Yet she didn’t name the collection, “humans are f-ing up our environment through continual interruption of natural life cycles.” She named it “Hypnosis.”
Yes, the designs are straight-up hypnotic. Duh. I mean, look at them and try to look away, especially in the video where they’re in motion.
So here’s my takeaway – Van Herpen had dresses that moved us from air to water, water to earth, etc – but anyone who’s taken physics would also look at this and say there’s a change in energy. That kinetic energy being transferred from motion – be it from walking or wind – to the garments is inherently transformative.
Perhaps more importantly, more urgently in our current climate, hypnosis can be a tool for change. People use it to heal trauma, to quit smoking, to change habits. It’s transformational, just as was almost every aspect of this collection. I felt like Van Herpen, quite cleverly, hypnotized us into rethinking our relationship with the environment. Do we want to be disruptors? Innovators? Harmonialists (a word that didn’t exist until just now, congrats on witnessing history)? How do we want to change our interaction with nature?
Again, we decide.
Who said art gives answers?
love,
Stig.
