Meet the Staff: The Sketchbook
· Blog Home
· Profile
· MySpace
· Contact Us
· FAQ/TOS
Older Articles
· Diptyque Do Son
· LP's Cream of the Crop: Fragrance
· Beauty Notes: Open call for models!
· Giovanni Tea Tree Triple Treat Shampoo, part 2
· Update on Annick Goutal and Diptyque
· LP's Cream of the Crop: Body, Nails, and Hair
· Giovanni Tea Tree Triple Treat Shampoo
· LP's Cream of the Crop: Brushes & Tools
· Quick bit of indie fashion
· LP's Cream of the Crop: Lips
Comments
· July 22, 2007 12:00 PM by
Colleen Shirazi
· July 22, 2007 7:32 PM by
Dain
Archives
· Beauty Blog (2003-2004)
· Fashion Blog (archive)
· New Releases Blog (archive)
· Beauty Articles (archive)
· April 2005
· May 2005
· June 2005
· July 2005
· August 2005
· September 2005
· October 2005
· November 2005
· December 2005
· January 2006
· February 2006
· March 2006
· April 2006
· May 2006
· June 2006
· July 2006
· August 2006
· September 2006
· October 2006
· November 2006
· December 2006
· January 2007
· February 2007
· March 2007
· April 2007
· May 2007
· June 2007
· July 2007
· August 2007
· September 2007
· October 2007
· November 2007
· December 2007
· January 2008
· February 2008
· March 2008
· April 2008
· May 2008
· June 2008
· July 2008
Recent blog posts:
Links
Barneys
refinery29
The Sartorialist
Jargol
Perfume Shrine
Ambre Gris
Polyvore
The Fashioniste
The Powder Group
LA-Story.com
Dain's Literary Attempts
Colleen's Beading Blog
Colleen's Adult Acne Blog
The Beauty Blog Network
Eponym Blog Directory.
TBF Project:Blog
The Lipstick Page Forums Beauty & Fashion Blog
Fashion Notes: A Manifesto Against the Mania for Tailoring (rant)
Fashion Notes: A Manifesto Against the Mania for Tailoring (rant)
Posted by Dain, Sunday, July 22, 2007 1:17 AM (Eastern)
Independent design* is very popular these days, in particular a furor over tailoring, led by the brilliance Nicholas Ghèsquiere and followed by a horde of Project Runway wannabes. This can only continue in the next few seasons: as a trend, it is just about reaching its peak among the fashionable hoi polloi. It is not a bad trend, as these things go. Fit is paramount to good clothing after quality. Indeed, that is the modus operandi of couture, quality and fit. But fashion is a temperamental goddess, and anyone with elite taste (and that would be me, a snob through and through) eschews the popular. Certain aspects about the Mania for Tailoring are starting to grate on my nerves.
ONE, I would submit that the Mania for Tailoring is directly responsible for the ugly models that so pervade the fashion world of today. Tailoring places focus on the designer, not the model, and so the demand for models that do not upstage the clothes (but rather ones that are dead-faced and "quirky"). Granted, models are not supposed to have personalities beyond the simple role of "beautiful person", that's just not their job. But lately, models have gone beyond the flexible and versatile into the aesthetic equivalent of tabula rasa. Blank, alien, characterless, nothing inside, slightly off: Gemma Ward, Coco Rocha, Lily Donaldson, Iekeliene Stange, Anja Rubik, Sasha Pivovarova, Daria Werbowy. I ask you, do most people know who these people even are? They may be more beautiful than the average mortal, but they are nothing compared to the "Supers".
To illustrate:
Daria Werbowy and Christy Turlington, whom I've chosen for their similarities: major models with fairly unexotic coloring (brunettes with medium skin tones, one blue-eyed, the other green-eyed), minimal makeup, minimal makeup, unfashiony, black & white beauty shots. The difference between them is subtle at first, and yet, once you do, it's all you can see. Daria is just a very pretty plain girl, and Christy... she looks as if she ought to be worshipped as a goddess, in fact she was...
This isn't even a good example. Daria may be overrated, but she is also one of the "best", which should give you an idea about the run-of-the-mill models that populate the catwalks these days.
TWO, it blurs the distinctions between the hierarchy of design. There is ready-to-wear that resembles couture (Balenciaga) and couture that resembles ready-to-wear (Chanel), and the rest is just spectacle (Dior). I don't think this particularly objectionable, but it does lead to weird things like The Row (the couture tee collection by the Olsens), a dizzying superfluity of independent jeans designers, and this video of Roland Mouret's new line on net-a-porter.com, which inspired me to write this article.
I just read a rave about these clothes on another blog, and it made me so mad. This is the most uninspired, predictable, boring collection of clothes. If you want easy glamour, why not spend your hardearned money on Lanvin or Stella McCartney or Narciso Rodriguez for chrissakes? RM is awkward in so many ways. The models don't look good in red lipstick, because they're not that pretty to begin with, and I'm not sure why they decided on such lank, lifeless hair, but I dare say it suits the overall look of the collection, models and clothes. There's the ubiquitous platform Louboutin—so common they're vulgar (I notice that Manolo Blahnik has escaped such a fate, however). The clothes are simple, in a palette of washed out neutrals, but with carefully documented eccentricities, due to... you got it, tailoring. In fact, it's used as ornamentation, as accent, as embellishment. It's really a lot of visible effort to little effect.
Like all arts, fashion is about innovation. The Mania for Tailoring was a direct response to boho chic and the infestation of brand labels that typified the late 90s and the early millenium. Instead of these particular ornamentations, people desired obscure craftmanship. But give a trend a long enough life, and it starts to look ridiculous, ornamental in itself. That's what I see with the RM line. The tailoring, and the designer, take center stage, and that is more important than great fashion. This is not great fashion (not at these prices), this is merely fashionable.
THREE, so where next? An entirely personal concern actually, because I am ever determined not to dress like other people, and I'm starting to feel I need something very new (I understand that most people have the opposition concern). I prefer very feminine clothing, so certain options are out for me. Boho chic is too out, tailoring is too in, so what is left? Why, classics, of course! Since is easy to criticize and difficult to create, I will reserve my fashion project for future posts, but the criticism here is intended to a context from which I spring, because fashion is ever a reaction in its dynamics, even as it strives after something as absolute as such things as "beauty".
*I am not speaking of indie fashion as Colleen meant it a few posts below, as outside of the mainstream. I mean independent in the small-name newcomer sense very much in the vein of Project Runway.
Labels: fashion notes, models
subscribe
in a reader
July 22, 2007 12:00 PM,
Hmmm...I checked out the runway video...I can agree, the clothes don't seem particularly inspired.
The question becomes, if you saw any one of these outfits on the street, would you recognize it as this guy's work? Or are they so generic, they might as well have been created by anyone?
Most things are like that though, more a matter of hype than of substance.
I'll have to say in that show, I don't think the models were bad-looking. The makeup was awful; all it was, was the lipstick, they didn't seem to be wearing any makeup other than that.
You're probably right, on some level there might be an effort to not have the models "compete" with the clothes, but that's a pretty poor philosophy.
July 22, 2007 7:32 PM,
No, I exaggerate. Certainly none of these models are ugly by normal standards, but by model standards... Well, that video you posted is probably a superior evidence of just how gorgeous models used to be.
High fashion favors the "quirky" these days, over the "classical". And though models have always been skinnier than the average, they seem more emaciated than usual. I wonder what man would lay his hands on some of these girls, most of them underage, gangling sticks--if they weren't "models".
And no, only someone who had made an effort to be "in the know", so much so that her head can't look at these clothes objectively, would think that these are beautiful clothes. They're nice enough, but they look like something from Banana Republic, in my humble opinion.
Post a comment (NO SPAM)
Links to this post:
Create a Link