Exactly a week ago Pope Francis paused in prayer and contemplation before the Shroud of Turin, the burial linen that some believe covered the body of Jesus after crucifixion. Visions of the Shroud easily come to mind when seeing the images of Givenchy's Spring/Summer 2016 collection, showcased during Paris Menswear Week.
Riccardo Tisci went back to his first and foremost obsession, religion, and turned once again to a technique that has so far worked in his favour on the marketing level - the collage.
But while for his S/S 2013 menswear collection for Givenchy Tisci sampled several images of the Virgin Mary and the Pietà from William Adolphe Bouguereau's paintings and remixed them together, this time he kept his collages fairly simple.
In some cases the designer over-imposed for example Diego Velázquez's painting "Christ Crucified" (View this photo) over an electric chair, then added a prisoner's identification number. In others, a portrait of Jesus with his crown of thorns was occasionally surrounded by barbed wire prints and replicated on T-shirts, sweatshirts, and men's skirts or appeared on light coats and overalls, assuming a diaphanous Shroud of Turin sort of look. Sometimes the same image was altered to show Christ with his eyelids closed in an unholy ecstasy.
Further elements such as priest-like cross pins and rosary bead-like necklaces accessorising the 11 Haute Couture looks included in this show also pointed towards religion.
The set, silhouettes and accessories revealed a bit better the main inspiration behind the collection: the cage on the runway, the scrub-like ensembles and the jailer's key necklaces referenced a precise theme - men locked up in jail (knitted kilts and pinstriped suits provided maybe a sort of alternative to a priest/prisoner's uniform...).
Prisoners do actually have a special place in the Christian imagination as Jesus himself was a prisoner and so were some of his followers such as Peter and Paul, while, as Jesus announces in "The Judgment of the Nations" discourse in Matthew's Gospel, visiting a prisoner is an act of mercy that wins the blessed the final reward - a place in Heaven ("I was in prison and you came to visit me").
Jesus is also an icon on many prison walls, Tisci argued, but so are the women on the posters often seen in prison cells. So, if Jesus appeared on the clothes, the poster girls turned into real women in pale pastel coloured lace slip gowns that exploded into sensual fringes of long silk tassels. The show culminated with Naomi Campbell in a sparkling jacket on a black bikini and thigh-highs.
Maybe, rather than delving into his Catholic roots, for this tale of bad boys and girls in which tailored looks like strong-shouldered suits and topcoats contrasted with prison stripes and American workwear (another inspiration for this show), Tisci read Martin Kemp's Christ to Coke volume that features Christ, the Cross and the American flag among the other universally recognisable global icons, and remixed them in his mind with a wider tradition of religious icons reinterpreted by pop culture (remember that portrait of Marc Almond by Harry Papadopolus?).
So religion may be once again a micro trend for the next season (the "santini" images of the Virgin Mary reappeared in Dolce & Gabbana's Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection surrounded by elaborate Baroque frames on sack cloth tops - View this photo - or appliqued on jackets and denim trousers - View this photo), but this new Givenchy collection reeks of déjà vu, and is also terribly oxymoronic as only fashion can be: the Son of God who made himself poor for our sake, is indeed used not to make a comment about unjustly persecuted people, but to celebrate "bad boys" and sell luxury products. "I needed clothes and you clothed me", Jesus stated in "The Judgment of the Nations", but he wasn't certainly referring to designer clothes.
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