Mention polka dots to any genuine contemporary art lover and they will start enthusing about Yayoi Kusama's iconic spots.
The Japanese artist has indeed been covering walls, floors, canvases and objects in polka dots since the ‘50s, basing her work on repetition and accumulation, turning the "infinity nets" she would see in her hallucinations and daydreams into mesmerising and colourful patterns.
Kusama claimed in an interview that "polka dots are a way to infinity" and I've actually been pondering about her words, wondering if this is what fashion designers who rediscovered polka dots in their Autumn/Winter 2011 collections were looking for, infinity.
Leaving behind the Italian Futuristi, Georgian-born David Koma moved in his new collection from Kusama’s spots.
Playing like Kusama on repetition, Koma replicated dots in prints, as laser cut holes perforating his capes and skirts and as appliquéd patent leather discs and decorative balls of fox fur in black, green or yellow.
The collection started on a black and nude palette but then progressed towards colours with sparkles of orange, fuchsia, green and yellow appearing through the holes.
The second part of the collection also included designs featuring prints by Russian photographer Oleg Dou.
The images, taken from Dou’s “Naked Faces” project, had the same hallucinatory quality of Kusama’s fields of acrylic polka dots and of her painted nets describing pseudo-dots in negative spaces, and added a surreal element to Koma's dresses.
Louise Gray’s collections usually feature the sort of designs that may give a heart attack to tailoring purists and minimalists.
Different colours, patterns, textures and materials clash and combine in one design, symbolising a certain over the top joyful exuberance that may not be everybody’s cup.
For the Autumn/Winter season Gray tried to restrain herself a bit, mainly focusing on spots and checks.
Yet while she restrained herself for what regarded the patterns, she didn’t seem to set herself any limits when it came to the actual numbers of spots and checks to use.
The collection, very aptly entitled “Up Your Look”, featured indeed colourful voluminous jumpers, tartan jackets covered in electric blue or gold dots, tartan prints mixed with bright checks and multi-coloured ruches sculpted out of check fabric.
All the designs were accessorised with fun jewellery pieces such as whistles for earrings and matched with headpieces by Nasir Mazhar and polka dot wellington heeled boots by Nicholas Kirkwood at Pollini.
Disciplined was instead the keyword to Marc Jacob’s Autumn/Winter 2011-12 collection.
For the next Autumnal season the designer left behind his Spring/Summer 2011 fluid designs inspired by the ‘70s to look at fitted silhouettes.
Rigid and severe lines were created employing synthetic materials such as Lurex, latex and cellophane, though irony and a playful mood were added by sprinkling such materials with polka dots.
Working with latex designers House of Harlot, Jacobs came up with tops, dresses and skirts covered in latex scales that looked like sequins, matched with Stephen Jones’ vinyl berets with organza chin straps decorated with spots and buttons.
Polka dots were the main theme: they appeared in different sizes and materials, in print and appliquéd on fabric; they spread like a virus on tights, skirts, blouses and pony skin sweaters; they decorated furry bags and leather bi-coloured gloves and their shape was also evoked by the round flaps of the pockets and the curved silhouette of the jackets.
Jacobs played a lot with contrasts as well, integrating cellophane jabots in guipure lace dresses with a Victorian cut but a dominatrix edge.
The palette – focusing on burgundy, maroon, dark green, blue and black – contrasted with the lightness of some of the materials used.
In this collection Jacobs essentially reinvented some staples of the American wardrobe, revisiting bomber jackets and pencil skirts, mixing rubber, stiff wool, cashmere, film, felt, double-face crepe, faux and real fur, manipulating fabric and adding three-dimensional dots and spots on cropped jackets, shifts and capes.
The mood was playful and ironic, though you wonder what will happen once the collection will be on sale and if latex and other assorted synthetic materials will definitely become a trend come next Autumn (though the latex trend was already anticipated by other designers - Nicole Farhi’s S/S 2011 collection also included for example latex pieces in collaboration with House of Harlot).
What’s for sure though is that hallucinatory and disturbing polka dots are here to stay - well, at least until next Winter.
In the meantime, you can learn more about Kusama in "Princess of Polka Dots", a work-in-progress documentary directed by Heather Lenz.
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