New York Fashion Week was a bit of a dull affair with not many notable collections. At times critics complained of the derivative ideas seen on the runways, but London has sadly revealed more borrowed moods than we could imagine.
At the moment the major sport in London is actually pretending of not seeing the imitation game going on in the current collections for the sake of the British fashion industry, while at the same time spotting the next big thing (could it be Marc Jacobs' protégé Amie Robertson, of A.V. Robertson, or Molly Goddard and her perilously voluminous tulle mumus?).
In the meantime a young and established generation of designers is revealing weaker than we thought: David Koma went down the Donatella Versace path without providing any new ideas for his sensual sihouettes; Gareth Pugh left his trademark gothic inspirations behind to provide his own vision of powerful women that blended retro futurism à la Blade Runner, Thierry Mugler's Virgin Mary apparition from his A/W 1984-85 show and Claude Montana's silhouettes.
The main inspiration of the show - women on top - was symbolised by French ballet star Marie-Agnès Gillot, her eyes covered in aviator shades, donning an officer's coat and sitting on a throne in the background of the runway taking place at the Grand Temple of Freemasons Hall.
Though this collection could have helped Pugh taking distance from his dark costumy shenanigans to refocus on his tailoring, his designs turned into an ode to '80s power dressing in which there was nothing new.
The Hannibal Lecter hockey masks (employed to prove Pugh's point - women are man-eaters - rather than to add that frisson of horror) and the make-up with an elastic that ridiculously highlighted the cheekbones of the models (View this photo), bizarrely turning them into clones of Cinzia Otherside, the ambiguous character out of Leo Ortolani's comic Rat-Man, distracted from the whole thing.
The most puzzling of the lot, though, was Mary Katrantzou. Her collection moved from the passion for dressing up derived from childhood; this main inspiration produced colourful designs that combined country western moods with glittery and sparkling textures.
Dolly Parton provided the soundtrack for Katrantzou's models clad in squarish rodeo jackets and shirtdresses covered in embroideries and appliqued elements representing hearts, stars and flames. Now, this could have been a great inspiration if Miuccia Prada hadn't been at it before Katrantzou.
This collection was indeed a combination of Miu Miu S/S 2011's boxy leather jackets and leather pencil skirts with colourful intarsia motifs, and of Miu Miu's Resort 2016 designs, that mixed tweed with western moods.
There were actually also fur coats, shrugs and stoles with vivid and bright intarsia that called to mind the coats in Prada's S/S 2014 collection, while the tongues of fire on the hems of the skirts were borrowed from Prada's S/S 2012 women and cars collection.
Other motifs such as the stars and the butterflies in this collection were reminiscent of Valentino's Pre-Fall 2016 designs that, as you may remember, were a mix of cowboy shirts and Oriental/Japanese motifs.
Mind you, butterflies were also a recurrent motif in Sarah Burton's Alexander McQueen's A/W 16 collection: the latter actually featured a few designs that reminded of the ubiquitous butterfly looks in many recent Valentino collections such as the Pre-Fall 2014 designs (apparently it took a lot of artisans not just in London, but in Italy as well to make the designs for McQueen's collection, who knows, maybe some of them were the same as Valentino's....).
Burton's satin duvet jackets inspired by nighttime and dreams pointed instead towards Cinzia Ruggeri's classic "Abito Letto" (Bed Dress) originally created for Vogue Casa in 1986 consisting in a quilted duvet gown matched with a satin pillow, a design then reinvented by Viktor & Rolf in their Autumn/Winter 2005-06 ("Bedtime Story") collection.
Fashion follows a cyclical rhythm, so it is only natural to get a sense of déjà-vu when you see something on the runway, after all, things are meant to go in and out of fashion all the time. But what's puzzling about these designs is that in most cases they do not show derivations from collections released a long time ago: Katrantzou's designs are indeed heavily indebted to relatively recent Prada and Miu Miu's collections and, in some cases, they may even spark a debate about copyright issues.
These recent collections may be the final proof that there is nothing new happening in fashion at the moment and that we are bombarded by so many images every day that we are not even capable of processing ideas and images and change them enough to provide innovations from a knockoffs. Because, you see, Miuccia Prada is undoubtedly a great remixer, but coming up with a remix of the remix is a very bad idea.
Though these derivative collections may be the low point of London Fashion Week (and they may influence young fashion design student in the wrong way as they may start thinking that all you have to do is lazily cutting and paste recent collections...), they may end up playing in favour of a younger generation of Italian designers: boycotted by the fashion media for many years, they may now regain some attention, if this is the current standard of their colleagues in Great Britain.
At the same time, these derivative collections may be symptoms of fashion fatigue. The remedy? Resetting fashion, rather than making designs immediately available after the runway. Stopping the fashion machine for 6 to 12 months may be difficult and tricky, but it would be the only way to make sure the system goes through a major detox.
In the meantime, Miuccia Prada, having also seen her coloured python collages from Prada's A/W 2011 collection making a reappearance on Burberry's A/W 2016 runway, can rest on her laurels: her brand may not be doing that great when it comes to sales, but, hell, it's still being widely copied and - as they say - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
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