"They don't sew, they don't drape, they're media freaks. It's unbelievable (…) These new kids go to the vintage shows and they buy a few pieces, they change a button or two and they knock it off (...) They don't have any sense of history and no curiosity about anything," states style icon and interior designer Iris Apfel at one point of Albert Maysles' 2014 documentary about her.
It is hard to disagree with Apfel and here at Irenebrination we have been spotting connections and knock-offs for years (way before everybody else jumped on the bandwagon and turned it into a trendy visual sport that mainly juxtaposes originals and copies without contexualising this phenomenon...).
What is striking at the moment, though, is the speed derived designs are produced at: you finish reviewing a season reeking with knock-offs and suddenly there are capsules, collaborations and other fashion related events that show links with other fairly recent products. Besides, while the main practice so far has been remixing previous collections, tweaking and altering small details has also been a successful exercise for some brands.
Take the case of Anya Hindmarch: the British fashion designer has never been terribly original and a few seasons ago she launched a collection of "Eyes" designs - bags, shoes and small accessories such as keychains that seemed to be a combination of Giles Deacon's googly eye designs with Fendi's Bag Bugs.
Hindmarch's A/W 2016 bags shaped like Pacman ghosts also made you wonder if they had any links with Giles' S/S 2009 Pacman-inspired collection, and the question about a possible derivation of her designs from Deacon's products is now back. Hindmarch has indeed just launched a home collection featuring a series of baby powder, coffee and suntan lotion scented candles in lacquered porcelain jars. The latter are decorated with slogans or with the humourously cartoony eyes that have become her trademark in more recent years.
Yet the eyes on the ceramic pieces call to mind the porcelain dish made by Richard Ginori as a souvenir for guests at Giles' special Pitti catwalk in 2010 (yes, you may argue that the eyes in Hindmarch's designs are round, while in Giles they look oval, a comparison best proved in the Selfridgette dress Giles designed in 2009 when Selfridges turned 100 years old, but the concept is the same...).
Yet Hindmarch isn't the only one who has been playing with tweaks and alterations: Giles himself has been busy recreating in his A/W 2016 couture collection a new version of Mila Schön's 1969 gown covered in slashes and inspired by Lucio Fontana's slashed canvases.
Alexander McQueen's sketched eagle in his Resort 2010 collection that covered the shoulder and chest area of his T-shirts and dresses (View this photo), was recreated into a digital print in Marcelo Burlon's County of Milan's collections and more recently the same idea was translated into a more simplified design that appeared on men's T-shirts for an Armani Exchange's collection.
This is in a way the same fate that fell upon McQueen's A/W 2009-10 snakes, reappropriated by Marcelo Burlon since 2014 and more recently by Alessandro Michele at Gucci, where they became a trademark of the house (as we have seen in a previous post).
Yet all these exercises in tweaking, altering and remixing only prove one thing - the laziness of many modern designers and fashion houses. In some cases such as Armani Exchange's shirts you may argue that the company was maybe trying to offer a trendy design and a lower entry price point to consumers, but you don't necessarily need to reissue something that has just been done two, three or five years ago by another company to do so, you can indeed come up with more original ideas for very different products as well.
An example? Fiorucci's Panini album that sold around 100 million packets of stickers in just a few months when it was first released in the '80s, turning into an instant cult and becoming a hit with both kids and grown-ups. Why is it so difficult nowadays for creative minds to come up with a cool, original and affordable product (not necessarily a garment or accessory...) that can win the hearts of consumers of all ages? Is it because, as Iris Apfel says, we have lost our curiosity?
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