It’s extremely difficult nowadays to find something truly original in fashion.
Everything has indeed been done and, despite seeing interesting designs on many runways, there hasn’t been any real fashion revolution.
Fashion history can boast about amazing landmarks such as the New Look or Le Smoking, but critics who will have to chronicle the history of our times may have a hard task on their hands.
Many designers seem to be referencing the past or the archives of the fashion houses they founded, inherited or are currently directing, presenting updated versions of successful ideas.
This is why I think fashion journalists should stop writing complacent reviews of fashion shows (to make sure fashion houses and labels still buy ads on the publications they write for…) and pursue a more critical approach.
Banal condescending never helped anyone, but constructive criticism makes people (in any kind of field) grow up and develop.
Think for example about Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren: they are two talented designers often described as incredibly original and cutting edge.
Yet the more I look at their creations, the more I think about Roberto Capucci, even though not many critics make this connection.
In all their collections, V&R follow one main principle, experimentation, but so did Capucci.
The materials employed by the Italian designer and the way he used them linked fashion with works of art such as sculptures and paintings, exploring the possibilities offered by experimental geometrical and architectural forms.
Capucci’s designs (compared in previous posts with some contemporary fashion creations) always showed he had a fascination for three-dimensionality, a passion for the shadows formed by pleats and folds and a special - almost obsessive - attention, for different perspectives and viewpoints.
Yet, rather than being praised, Capucci often attracted a lot of criticism for his abstract and rigid volumes, like the ones he employed in his boxed lines.
Inspired by the effects formed on the surface of water after throwing a stone in, Capucci created in 1956 the "Dieci Gonne" (Ten Skirts) dress.
This design was characterised by a series of ten skirts of different lengths layered one on top of the other that created a rather unusual and sculptural silhouette.
The dress became so iconic at the time that it was chosen for a Cadillac advert and also appeared in a comic strip featuring Marilyn Monroe.
Throughout his career Capucci went on experimenting with accumulation techniques, coming up with designs in which he layered for example several collars one on top of the other.
Moving from a very basic item borrowed from the male wardrobe, a shirt, Viktor & Rolf proceeded following three different principles while working on the designs for their Spring/Summer 11 collection: accumulation (a technique also used for their A/W 2010 collection), exaggeration and voluminous proportions.
The origins of the new designs should maybe be traced back to their “One Woman Show” collection (Autumn/Winter 2003-04) that included models walking down the runway wearing a series of shirts or jackets piled one on top of the other, a trick that allowed the designers to play with ideas of volumes, stacking and distortion.
The S/S 11 collection opened with a showpiece, an oversized shirtdress with four collars and four sets of cuffs piled one on the other.
Inspired by button-down, white or black cotton shirts, V&R then added pale blue trousers with white cuffs at the ankle, asymmetrical shirt dresses or mini-dresses incorporating a draped design and a rigid corset and white cotton shirt dresses crisscrossed by irregular black sequinned zebra stripes.
While among the best pieces there were the all white organza and cotton trousers and shirts and a very simple white shirt with tails trailing behind matched with tight fitting black taffeta trousers (a sort of gender bending design in which the roles and looks of the bride and groom were mixed together in typical V&R style...), the final deconstructed bridal dresses were hymns to extravagance and accumulation that included several pearl studded collars and cuffs in different sizes and multiple skirts protecting the model's body in various layers of fabrics, from cotton to silk and lace.
But in Capucci's case the layers of fabrics and the dramatic structure of the dresses seemed to be almost weapons to keep at bay banality.
In modern fashion there is instead the impression that designers are more interested in creating fantastic habitats, avant-garde, surreal and exuberant pieces that, while being extremely striking on the runway, often lead you to question the meaning of their essence and wonder if, rather than being interpreted as works of art, these pieces should maybe just be conceived as the perfect products of the confusing and at times extravagantly banal times we are living in.
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