There are hundreds of annoying things happening every season on and off the contemporary fashion runways, one of the most annoying remains seeing extremely young models - in maybe nice, yet definitely not new designs - walking with empty and zombified expressions on their faces.
Yet, believe it or not, there were other times: watch these two videos taken from YouTube that show Sybilla’s catwalk shows from the mid-to-late ‘80s in Milan and try to spot the main differences between a catwalk show then and a catwalk show now.
The videos could almost be used as compendiums of what could be considered as “currently inconceivable fashion behaviours”: from ample coats that cover the models' bodies rather than revealing them to the use of amazing amounts of fabrics employed not to aimlessly wrap up the body of the wearer but to transform and mutate its shape; from geometric tops that could be reversed and worn in two different ways (unthinkable!) to extremely long skirts matched with flats (do you mean flats, so no embarrassing accidents for the models? Oh, come on!); from fashion models smiling and wearing glasses (not sunglasses...) playing at being managers rather than amazons, vamps and femmes fatales to Picasso-profiled Spanish actress Rossy de Palma (a Sybilla fan who stated in an interview on Vanity Fair in 1989: “The dresses of Sybilla remind you of when you were a child and your mother would tell you fairy stories. But in her dresses you live that, like a dream”) modelling instead of being used by high profile bloggers for their own means such as advertising horrid collaborations between fashion bloggers and high street chains.
The most serious offence in these videos is essentially one, though: they both feature clothes and accessories (look at the bags and cases in the second video) that real women could actually wear. Shocking stuff, eh? We should maybe ask YouTube to remove such videos in case some fashion design students spot them and decide to take inspiration from them.
In a way it’s funny that, while there has been a lot of talk about Balenciaga as this year it’s the 40th anniversary of the designer’s death, Sybilla - considered in the ‘80s as the hottest thing to come out of Spain since Balenciaga - has largely been forgotten.
Born in New York in 1963 to an Argentine diplomat and a Polish aristocrat (known in the fashion industry as Countess Sybilla of Saks Fifth Avenue), Sybilla Sorondo moved first to Madrid and then in 1980 to Paris.
Here she worked as apprentice cutter and seamstress at Yves Saint Laurent’s returning to Madrid in 1981.
A member of the post-Franco generation like filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and part of the cultural revolution that took place during the ‘80s in Madrid, Sybilla launched her own collection in 1983, signing with Italian ready-to-wear manufacturer Gibo in 1987 (in the same year she also won the Premio Balenciaga for Best Young Designer of the Year) and opening shops in France and Japan.
She quickly became famous for her timeless style and for garments - especially coats and jackets - characterised by clean lines and strong silhouettes at times borrowed from biomorphic shapes.
After retiring for seven years from the world of fashion, she came back on the scene in 1999 with a secondary line called Jocomomola (though in 1996 she also launched an interior design line), but disappearing again from the main runways after the Autumn/Winter 2007-2008 season.
Her designs are part of different collections in museums all over the world including the Museo de la Moda in Barcelona, the Musée de la Mode et du Costume in Paris and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and her creations were also featured two years ago in the exhibition "Histoire idéale de la mode contemporaine vol. I: 70-80” at Paris' Les Arts Décoratifs.
After this brief excursus on Sybilla, re-watch the videos - or look on YouTube and come up with your own compilation of videos "from another fashion era" when the catwalk shows involved serious journalists, critics, buyers and investors rather than a bunch of celebrities and assorted fashionistas - and try to spot further inconceivable behaviours compared to contemporary fashion shows.
I'm sure you'll find so many, you'll end up feeling pretty disturbed by the current fashion industry and by what it stands for.
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