In a previous post we looked at aerial views employed in fashion as inspirations, moving from the "Manifesto of Aerial Architecture" penned by the Futurists who wished to see one day the birth of a genuinely aerial city characterised by continuous lines that were best admired from the sky.
Aerial views reappeared as the main inspirations behind two collections during the menswear shows, Louis Vuitton and Ermenegildo Zegna's. Architecture wasn't involed in any of the collections, though, as designers approached the main theme from different perspectives.
Aerial at Vuitton was interpreted as landscapes seen from satellites. Style director Kim Jones stated he was indeed inspired from a trip to South America and in particular to the Atacama Desert in Chile, and Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru. Though Jones did a research trip in these areas, he also mentioned during previews NASA maps of the Atacama Desert.
There are actually online pictures of these areas with their rocky outcrops and sandy plains taken by the NASA World Wind open-source virtual globe that could be easily used to summarise the colour palette for Jones's collection for Vuitton, with its earthy tones, Thunderbirds blues, and desert sands.
References to aerial views of the landscapes were also made in the textures and surface elaborations that included double-face cashmere coats with blanket-like stripes running around the edges that called to mind traditional Chilean costumes; wool and alpaca scarves; jumpers that seemed to reproduce the geoglyphs of the Nazca Lines visible only from high above the ground; sweaters with shearling fur panels, silk parkas, and reversible gray cashmere/sand silk trenchcoats; rugged sweaters and vicuña jumpsuits (yarn connoisseurs know that this is an extremely soft yet also very expensive fibre, so the vicuña designs will only be availabe in the company's made-to-order service).
Silvery expedition bags (complete with camping flasks) added a touch of NASA space age to the collection, while hiker boots brought it back down to earth, though you wonder what's the use of producing luxury hiking boots when you can have perfectly functional and better ones at a fraction of the cost.
In a way this was the exact point that made you think: Jones is a well experienced traveller and has a knowledge of Andean fibres, but the collection can be interpreted as a luxury brand taking a trip to poor areas of the world and robbing them of their culture to produce extremely expensive items (chinchilla hooded/black python windbreakers anybody?) dedicated to very few consumers.
A few days ago in Milan aerial views were interpreted instead in a cosmic key. Stefano Pilati mixed the urban and the natural in his collection for Ermenegildo Zegna, juxtaposing vicuña, flannel and silk, to high-tech processes (thermal bonding) and technological fibres. There was also another dichotomy there between the future, symbolised by the pre-show video of planets and stars, and the past and in partcular the prehistorical times, with cardigans covered in stegosaurus spikes and crocodile boots with raised toes (again, file under "extreme luxury for wealthy people").
Zegna's textured, pinstriped and checkered fabrics were the backbone of the collection that revolved around oversized coats, cashmere quilted parkas and bombers, pea coats and fluid double-face cashmere coats, in a palette that mainly focused on dark colors with some splashes of camel, gray green.
Rather than taking a trip to a faraway country like Jones did, Pilati said he was inspired by a talk by the director of the planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and he enlisted the help of Italian-born astrophysicist, author and recording artist Fiorella Terenzi who did recordings of radio waves from far-away galaxies, to create the soundscapes for the show.
Pilati's main point was making comparisons between nature being in control of our world and the designer being in control of trends and styles. Though the designer managed to remain grounded using special fibres and fabrics, it is only natural to wonder if the aerial view as inspiration may not cause a complete detachment from reality for luxury houses: from up above we may look to them as wealthy consumers keen on investing on their pieces, but down on earth it's easy to see that, come the Autumn/Winter season, only a very tiny fraction of the global population will ever opt for a vicuña jumpsuit and a pair of crocodile boots.
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