Part of the California Clay Movement together with Kenneth Price, Robert Arneson and John Mason, Ron Nagle was first inspired in his work by Giorgio Morandi's still lives. Starting from basic forms such as Morandi's cup and snuff bottle, Nagle then moved onto experimenting with colours, materials and scales.
Influenced by Art Deco architecture and culture from the '50s and the '60s, Nagle reworked these themes into his textures and nuances, coming up with polished surfaces and sleek lines.
His ceramic style is dubbed as exuberant: he creates indeed globe like formations, coral-like spires, enigmatic abstract shapes, miniature dreamscapes and alien forms and formations, some of them modelled while watching old Charlie Chan films.
Nagle's porcelain pieces displayed last year at the Venice Art Biennale were the starting point also for Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez's Autumn/Winter 2014 collection.
The latter mainly focused on volumes: sculptural shapes prevailed in the rounded structured shoulder tops and wool jacquard coats that gave the impression they were made in a kind of multi-grain fabric dotted with specks of bright colours that called to mind innovative materials such as waste recycled plastics and plastic sheets used in the construction industry for kitchen worktops, desktop surfaces, wall finishes, furniture and signage.
The designs were matched with functional above the knee skirts or trousers and accessorised with flat shoes, though some silhouettes such as full sleeves, hourglass waists and flaring hips seemed borrowed from couture.
Moving from Nagle's sleek, glossy, translucent and richly glazed textures, intricate surface designs and abstract motifs, Proenza Schouler created a series of dresses in which different panels and curves intersected with straight lines or made in a series of fabrics that called to mind insulation foam.
Shame it was exactly those techno moods, scuba-like insulation foam materials, rounded architectural silhouettes that tapered toward the wrist, and embossed fabrics that gave you the tangible sensation of déjà vu the global press may have forgotten to write about to avoid getting into rows and problems.
The silhouettes, cocoon coats, jackets with rounded shoulders and some of the embossed surface elaborations seemed to be re-edits of Balenciaga's Autumn/Wnter 2012-13 (see image 8 in this post - remember the skirts or high-waist pants matched with tops characterised by rounded or exaggerated silhouettes and with embossed motifs?) and Autumn/Winter 2013-14 collections (see image 9 in this post - remember the cracked surfaces/swirling textures?).
The Balenciaga derivation was actually the weak point of the collection (that also referenced Proenza Schouler's Autumn/Winter 2012/13 designs): how can this be considered as innovative when we have seen similar designs not so long ago on at least another two runways? Ah, the great mysteries of fashion.
There is one huge advantage, though, in such collections: if you are a jourmalist and have reviewed the collections these designs are derived from, you may even be able to copy your own reviews and reuse the same words to describe the new one. Fashion may have never been so disappointing, but writing has never been easier.
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