If you take all the themes and influences of the season and combine them, is that what’s modern? Not necessarily. You’ve got to look back to look forward, but fashion’s infatuation with the 70s this season and last – and its newfound recycling of the 80s for fall/winter 15 – often feels like pastiche rather than invention. That isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not new either. Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu collection, which closed the season on Wednesday in Paris seemed like a cheeky comment on it all.
Here was a collection that took us from the late 70s through the 80s in a jumble of clashing patterns, colors, fabrics and music. It was ‘decade-influenced fashion’ overdone and overworked from the slyly intentional and highly humorous mastermind of fashion’s most clever commentator. Was it so old it was new? That wasn’t really the idea. Watch it sell, however, and Mrs Prada’s point will be proven.
The soundtrack sampled 80s band Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s 21st Century Boy, a tribute to i-D. “i-D Magazine, once considered the most pretentious magazine in the of the world, now simply the best,” a speaker voice said. It was an appropriate reference for the collection, because i-D – much like our surrounding fashion world – is defined by our history, but constantly looking to reinvent ourselves through it. “You’re from what magazine?” Mrs Prada asked backstage. “i-D,” was the answer. Kicking up a laugh, she shouted, “So good luck!”
At Louis Vuitton, Nicholas Ghesquière showed his third and most brilliant collection to date for the house in the incredibly surroundings of La Fondation Louis Vuitton. The building’s futuristic modernity suggested the same approach to the new that Ghesquiere is famous for, but it was in the designer’s fusion of these elements with the same ‘decade fashion’ Miu Miu played with that things really did seem new.
With Grimes on the sound system, Ghesquiere opened with an icy white teddy bear fur on Freja Beha, its size and texture contrasted in the skimpiness of skirts and metallic surfaces of futuristic fabrics. It sounds complicated but it felt the total opposite. The Louis Vuitton collection summed up the sexy 80s glam theme of the season, but it wasn’t by any means a recap for fall/winter 15. This was something new. Modern.
Credits
Text Anders Christian Madsen
Photography Mitchell Sams