Day: 27/09/2021

On The Border

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The setting is rather otherworldly, a forbidding suburbia, but Riccardo Tisci’ Burberry is not for children of a dystopia

Burberry must believe that the majority of those who watch their livestream do so on their smartphones. It’s probably true. The brand’s spring/summer 2022 show is not only optimised for phone viewing, it seems to be filmed specifically for broadcasting to phone users, or TikTok habitués. Rather than in landscape orientation, the show is streamed in portrait. When you rotate your phone, the screen keeps (largely) to the north-south sizing. This is also rather true if you watch it on your notebook: to meet the landscape view, the image is half of the portrait! Even when you click your web browser to full screen, nothing is changed. Watching on the smart phone, especially in 21:9 screen ratio, is truly a reminder that fashion has become a digital experience, involving just the viewer alone, even when we’re told that it’s all IRL again. You can watch shows on the MRT train or in bed, even in the wee hours of the morning.

In terms of the feel of the presentation, the women’s is rather similar to the men’s presentation in June. Desolation is the setting. There is barely any soundtrack except the ambient sounds and, when the scene shifts to a sort of dance club (youth?!), music to move enthusiastically to. Multiple is the setting, from sand mounds in some void deck to empty echo-y rooms to corridors with speakers on one side to that packed dance space (a message there?!), where even the large, floppy-eared (no idea why some models need the prosthetic) can move un-hassled. The clothes do not seem to have anything to do with the somewhat cold surroundings: they are far less apocalyptic-seeming, more an exploration—a metamorphosis, even—of the things women might wish to wear when the pandemic is finally over, without stripping down to the underclothes. Which is understandable because, according to the show notes, Riccardo Tisci dedicated the collection to his mother.

If Christopher Bailey modernised the Burberry trench coat in the early 2000s and turned it into a fashionable staple, Mr Tisci has now made it sexy. They are, in fact, not kept whole: sleeves are removed, collars too, and in quite a few styles, the back—yes, entire backs! Deconstructed would be a strong word to use here (you can trace the garment to its original silhouette), but there is clearly a reimagining of what the trench coat could be used for. They could be worn as a dress, for instance, and with the rounded shoulders, look like a dress. And if you think that the Burberry trench coat is still too traditional for you, Mr Tisci dishes up some with geometric shapes on them, which could be discreet applications of tone on tone or something more eye-catching (that is key, isn’t it, when we embrace social gathering enthusiastically, again?), with contrasting colours of black and white on the more trad khaki. A garment can be so strikingly and effectively transformed.

Geometrical shapes are seemingly a new obsession with Mr Tisci, as if he was recently given a set square and a compass, and he is rediscovering the joy of their use. Curved shapes—that include the elliptic and parabolic—abound. Some are used symmetrically, and in sum look like creatures wearing gas masks or full-face respirators (did we also see a burka?). Some are more random in composition (abstract, really) and, in black and white, look like those on cows, but designed by man, not nature. Layered asymmetry is strong too. Sheer fabrics (netting?) over more shapes and, in some, with text (one reads “universal sports”). A low-front tailored gilet is a cape at the rear, a poncho has a vertical hoodie centre front and back, a top that looks like a blazer on the lower right half is a throw on the opposite end on the left. Relatively modest is the collection of 52 styles, but no doubt, visually compelling. And, best of all, there is a lot to see.

Photos: (top) Zhao Xiangji and (runway) Burberry

Remembering Alber Elbaz

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Major names and labels will honour the late designer with a single interpretation of his work each in a tribute show to be live-streamed during Paris Fashion Week

The new entity that Alber Elbaz created before his death in April will organise a fashion event in honour of its founder. AZ Factory just announced on social media that the Love Brings Love fashion show, to be live-streamed on the brand’s website and Instagram, will feature designers from all over the world, totaling 44. It is not known if the organisers are aware that this number 4 in many parts of Asia is not considered auspicious. Probably not: four(!) designers will represent this continent: three from Japan—Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo, Sacai’s Chitose Abe, and Tomoki Koizumi—and one from China—Guo Pei.

Each participating designer will present a bespoke work inspired by the legacy left by Mr Elbaz, according to AZ Factory’s press advisory. The concept of the show is based on Théâtre de la Mode, a travelling French fashion exhibition that toured between 1945–1946, just after World War II. It was spearheaded by Robert Ricci, son of Nina Ricci, and featured the top Parisian couturiers of the day, about 60 of them, such as Ricci (of course), Balenciaga, Lanvin, and Balmain. The clothes were worn on mannequins 70-cm tall, approximately one-third the size of their human equivalent, and were created by artists such as Christian Bérard and Jean Cocteau.

It is not known how visually spectacular the AZ Factory show would be, or if dolls would be used, but Love Brings Love is now seen as the highlight event of Paris Fashion Week, just as the risible Fendace was. The show will be live-streamed on 5 October, 8pm CET, or 2am here on October 6. Staying up?

Photo: AZ Factory/Instagram

Fendace Is Verdi Real

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It’s dubbed The Swap, but in a world with too many labels and too much clothes, are the Fendi and Versace I-do-you, you-do-me collections necessary? Are they at all nice?

It looks like Milan Fashion Week has its climax show to end the festivities. The “unexpected” Fendi and Versace or Fendace collaboration, or “hack”, to steal from present-day, pandemic-poised parlance, really took place after the initial rumour grew more heads than on Medusa’s. And rather than a reprisal of the Gucci/Balenciaga manoeuvre in April (or vice versa), Kim Jones (and design partner Silvia Venturini Fendi) traded places/brands with Donatella Versace to “interpret” the other house’s aesthetics and codes. The result is high on the marketing potential of the idea than the ideation itself, more brash than dash, more Versace than Fendi. It isn’t clear yet, which brand will stand to gain. Versace, fresh from a showing just three days earlier had already jog one’s memory about those ideas that make the house instantly recognisable, do they need another splashy retelling? Or, is this Fendi trying to go hipper, playing down Mr Jones’s banal muliebrity in his reimagination of the brand?

It is like his Shein moment, her Boohoo, all TikTok-ready, influencer-approved. Sure, we understand that we are living in such times, but must we see Fendi go from soignée a week earlier to meretricious now, Versace go from Versace to Versace Max? It is understandable that brands love mash-ups and, possibly, their customers too, but is it really time to blur aesthetic lines when no side gains? One SOTD reader was clearly dismayed when he texted us this morning about Versace’s interpretation of Fendi, “In the end, it just looked like two Versace shows; one better than the other! Apart from the monogram, there was sadly, no Fendi to speak of.” Make that three if you count the spring/summer 2022 show of the main line. “It’s the first in the history of fashion,” Ms Versace said through a media release. On both front, yes.

No one is mistaken that this is Sacai’s Chitose Abe doing Jean Paul Gaultier and certainly not, if a pop reference is preferred, Lady Gaga doing Cole Porter! It is all about the hype. Do we still remember that? Or has hype been so over-hyped that we are more immune to it than one relentless virus? Is hoopla so blah that we need to revive it. And throw in some old-time catwalk excesses (a revolving Medusa logo reveals the double F?) and other-era models to up the surprise factor (since there are none in the clothes)? Sure it is a delight to see Kristen McMenamy playing Donatella Versace, Mariacarla Boscono still looking good, and Kate Moss looking not, but when it comes to Naomi Campbell closing the show, it really is a bit jelak. Did she not just appear in the earlier Versace show, in the same swagger?

There is the laughable name too. Sure, the project can be cheekily referred to as Fendace (the lazy conflation of Fendi and Versace), but when it is actually spelled out as a real brand, it sounds like something you would find in Mahboonkrong Centre in Bangkok, among the Armanee jeans, Frid Perry polos, Adibas kicks, and Relax watches. Clearly ‘Verdi’ is not allowable—a national icon deserves far greater respect. Perhaps this is a dig at the Chinese counterfeiters who can’t spell. Still, could they not think of something less Qipu Lu, Shanghai? We have no idea if this would appear as a label on the back of the clothes, but since Fendace is already there as a belt buckle and on the bags (including those Book wannabes), so expect nothing less. According to reports, the project was brewing since February although the news broke that it would be a sudden coming together of the brands only this week. Designers taking over as new creative directors of other brands have precocious less to work with. A waste of resources, just to feed the empty hype?

The show opens with Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi doing Versace. One senses this is really the job Mr Jones was after, rather than the Fendi appointment. Loud is waiting to jump out of him, and he creates the chance to allow it to radiate, but could he do loud better than Versace has been? It is not hard to see that Mr Jones is not particularly adept at handling or mixing prints. Or squeeze out more. The florid Versace silk dresses and separates look like they could come from a lame season of the now-defunct Versus. Donatella embracing Fendi, a house so unlike the one her brother founded, conversely, appeared the more triumphant among the trio, leaving every identifiable Versace hallmark where they can be left, like a canine marking her territory. Even the Fendi monogram is treated to Versace-esque colours. No garment is free of Medusa heads, animal prints, Oriental frets, Baroque swirls… whatever could be squeezed onto a silk screen. If not, there is always the chain mail.

Is it because the show took place on Versace’s turf? Would it be different if it is staged at Fendi’s headquarters? Will it be there next? Would there be a next? Where would the clothes and accessories be sold? Both lines at each other’s stores? Just as the show was live-streamed on both brands’ website, on visually similar pages? High-high pairings (in this case, one French-owned—LVMH and the other by American upstart Capri Holdings) may be trending now, but how Fendace will pan out is perhaps too early to tell. The idea may not have been explored before, but the execution is nowhere near radical. And, it is hard to see the sustainability (in every sense of the word) of The Swap. It is a showy novelty set up to wane.

Photos: Fendi/Versace/Fendace