Fashion Charts VIII

1. J.W. Anderson Spring/Summer 2015

2. Christopher Shannon Spring/Summer 2015

3. Topman Design Spring/Summer 2015

Longing for retro stripes. The ones we wore twenty years ago and were happy to get rid of when we moved away from home. Thrown over like a blanket from grandmother (Jonathan), sporty as in Sporty Spice (Christopher) and stripper-stripy as in 1970s porn (Gordon). Another top three.
/HORST

Image credits Vogue

Chain Reaction II

fig a. A panel dress by Martin Margiela. And a panel dress by Maison Martin Margiela. Restaged in the latest pre-collection lookbook that looked back to the label's beginnings.

fig b. A trench coat by Veronique Branquino. And a trech coat by Veronique Branquino, accompanied by variations of Anderson and Anonymous (Maison Martin Margiela).

fig c. A black suit and the iconic image of Stella Tennant by Mark Borthwick. Two classics that set the tone for the retro-designer-triptych.

fig d. A pinstripe dress. A striped dress. A checked suit. And a shirt bra. The chronological emancipation of menswear, seen here pushed furthest by Anderson who always bows to and borrows from Kawakubo.

1. Maison Martin Margiela Spring/Summer 2006
2. Maison Martin Margiela Pre Spring/Summer 2015
3. Veronique Branquinho Fall/Winter 2004
4. Veronique Branquinho Pre Spring/Summer 2015
5. J.W. Anderson Pre Spring/Summer 2015
6. Maison Martin Margiela Pre Spring/Summer 2015
7. Maison Martin Margiela Spring/Summer 1999 & Mark Borthwick Stella Tennant, 2000
8. Maison Martin Margiela Pre Spring/Summer 2015
9. Veronique Branquinho Pre Spring/Summer 2015
10. J.W. Anderson Pre Spring/Summer 2015
11. Maison Martin Margiela Pre Spring/Summer 2015
12. Comme des Garçons Fall/Winter 1995
13. J.W. Anderson Pre Spring/Summer 2015
14. Veronique Branquinho Pre Spring/Summer 2015

The world is a faded cloth. Designers are looking back to their origins, their founding years. The 1970s via the 1990s. Even if they weren't there. Together, they are recreating classics.

Veronique Branquinho 2015 = Veronique Branquinho, circa 1995 (regaining)
J.W. Anderson 2015 = Comme des Garçons, circa 1995 (redoing)
Maison Martin Margiela 2015 = Martin Margiela, circa 1995 (remembering)

Their colours are beige, black and blue. Their garments are tailored and masculine with softened volume and deconstructed details. Everything is nostalgic like blurry sepia images in a family album. But unfortunately, those photos aren't real, they are the result of filters.
/HORST

Image credits Vogue

"Prada Banality", Post-Painterly Art III

or 'Fashion For Intellectuals' (FFI)



1. Sascha Braunig Nets, 2012
2. Prada Fall/Winter 2013

Her fashion was not 'mainstream' nor 'everyday'. It was the dishevelled proposal for a genius. The kind of artist who does not have to search for ideas, tactics or strategies. Miuccia Prada is talking to the ones who do what they have to do. Those with a different vision. A different sight. Another world view.
/HORST

Post Milan II

A 'False Encyclopaedia' double feature with Alex Fury, discussing:
Prada Spring/Summer 2014

Tropical prints, looser, loucher shapes, a twenty-first century re-imagining of a twentieth-century American vacation. It was the fantasy rather than the reality of a Hawaii holiday that Prada was articulating for summer, I reckon.

Toting those suitcases longingly with your office drone suiting, trousers loosened up, that forties feel. Burnt umber and burgundy and evergreen and slithery satin bomber-jackets, all all those carnation and hibiscus prints plastered over everything. There was something of the land-locked, Tikki-tourist, those mid-century, middle-class middle-Americans who never made it to the tropics, but dreamed ceaselessly about it nevertheless. The sweaters with sunset scenes intarsia-knit into them were postcards - 'wish we were there', rather than 'wish you were here'. Just like the cheesecake pin-ups they'll never have, and those good-looking girls they'll never get, flouncing after them in flirtatious, diamanté-strewn showgirl dresses.

Mrs Prada's kick was unattainable fantasy. Except, it was her fantasy of that unattainable fantasy. And you can have it, at a price.
/ALEX

At least the sleeve layering added a moment of abstraction within an über-literal collection that got stuck in 1940s nostalgia - when the exotic image of Polyn-Asia was Americanised in memorabilia and gas station postcard kitsch. Here, irony reveals itself as not 'pretending to pretend' but 'being what is': derisory, pathetic, mediocre (to quote Mehdi Belhaj Kacem). I'd like to burn those memories.
/HORST








1. Prada Spring/Summer 2014
2. Elvis Presley Blue Hawaii, 1961
3. Businessman 1950s
4. Rolf Armstrong Sunny Skies, 1953
5. Roy Lichtenstein Sunrise, 1984
6. Wassily Kandinsky Tension In Red, 1926
7. Ed Ruscha Burning Gas Station, 1966
8. Prada Spring/Summer 2014

All about Alex Fury

Now & Then VI

Part V of 'Duplicate Diptych Week'



1. Prada Spring/Summer 2013
2. Prada Spring/Summer 1997

When Miuccia Prada is referring to... Miuccia Prada, family heritage becomes family business. The redesigned campaign for a re-retro signature: A colour block collar, a boyish haircut, a particular pose.
/HORST

Identity Crisis

1. Raf Simons Fall/Winter 2013
2. Prada Fall/Winter 2013

After a recurrent tribute to Helmut Lang via Jil Sander (the cross, the show credit print), Raf is channeling Miuccia. Just like Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin in Big Business (1988) someone swapped bodies. But somehow something got lost in transmission. And comedy turns into grotesque horror, see The Fly (1958).
/HORST

Boobarella

Armchair Gaetano Pesce

If Salvador Dalí likes to lounge in the UP5 armchair by Gaetano Pesce, Horst does, too. In fact he would in any case. Especially when 'La Mamma' (as it is also known as) and her round curves are enhanced by stripes.
/HORST