A NYFW Drivethru

I don't really have the time or the patience to traipse all the way back through each individual show, so here are some of the pieces that struck me as I trawled.





That there was some of the Marchesa show. A British design team, quite young and highly favoured by the Red Carpet Crowd.
BUT. Do you notice something strange? I do. It's the Givenchy HC show, recreated without the same level of daring, vision, and beauty, but recreated none the less. Unfortunate lack of imagination, but the dresses are still quite lovely. Just not so...stunning. Lovely, but not stunning.
These shoes from the Philip Lim show were probably the best part of said show. I was not enjoying the lack of structure and the general dull hue of the shoe. But these shoes...they are something else. What a blue! Perfect deep hyacinth - a flash of brilliance amongst the khaki and grey.

Marc Jacobs

So...I basically completely bailed on NYFW. To be honest, I started to watch some of the early shows and then ended up getting a little...well...bored. There was a lot of dressing for a time that is definitely NOT A/W. What was with all the floaty little skirts? The sheer fabrics?? Lovely, light, lots of movement...not so good in the bleak November rain. Or any rain.
How and ever, there were a few gems amongst all that floaty fabric. The Marc Jacobs show being one of them.
You know what you are getting with Marc Jacobs: 70s floral and paisley style liberty prints, smock and empire lines, quite kitsch, quite fun and girly. This show was a near complete departure from his usual style - bold and modern cuts, interesting fabrics and textures, exaggerated shoulders. It was sleek, sophisticated - surprisingly similar, in fact, to his collections produced for Louis Vuitton. The heavily stylised outfits were far more suited to the grandeur of Paris, than the more relaxed fashions generally seen at NYFW.I wasn't complaining. It marks a welcome change of tack for Jacobs, and hopefully the start of something new and a move away from those perennial 70s smocks.I also highly enjoyed the polka-dot theme. Particularly these skirts with the discs making up the body of the skirt. An interesting concept, and quite similar I think to the futuristic feel of the Armani Prive show.

This was my favourite piece from the show:
The skirt with the tightly structured overlay, the crop jacket, the BOOTS...just fabulous.Also, red. A deep crimson is coming to the fore. Quite a nice change to the leather and purple palettes of last winter's season. I was already fed up of nude, but it seems there has been a real reversal. Thank you, Jil Sander, for showing us all how beautiful colour can be again.

Yobbs in the Quad and Hoodies in the Halls

You just have to love the Torygraph. One of their headlines this morning is "University elite forced to take fixed quotas of state pupils" Shock! Horror! The article goes on to tell us that private school headmasters have condemned the move as 'dangerous social engineering'.
What are these people expecting? The cast of Shameless having a bevvy on the quad? A white transit van rolled up outside the main gates?
It is true to say that there are problems inherent with positive discrimination. I saw the same thing in India - some students were angry that there education may be compromised by the University having to hire a certain number of 'scheduled caste' (low caste and Dalit) lecturers and staff, even if they were not capable of taking an university class to the same standard as the other, more privileged and by extension, better trained, lecturers. Why compromise education standards for the sake of statistics?
If positive discrimination does not come into force then the opportunity for the marginalised groups in a society will never arise. It is wrong to presume that just because the rest of the institutions have not yet caught up to the same level of equality of service provision a person should be excluded for the rest of their life. Failed by the system once, does not equate with removal from that system. It was not that person's 'fault' that they were overlooked along with millions of others when the policy makers were mapping out their lives. These young people that the Telegraph and the rest of the Tory backbench are so worried about deserve just as much opportunity to education as the glorious alumni of Eton and Marlborough. The little hoodlums that they fear turning up and graffiti-ing the ancient walls of learning (you can take the kid out of boredom, but you can't take boredom out the kid, unless they are Banksy) are probably not the sort of kids from state schools that are going to apply. The teens who decide to risk their 'street cred' by applying to Oxbridge are ultimately going to be the brightest of the bunch, with the most to give. They will probably be highly ambitious and very capable in social and academic situations. They will have excelled beyond the standard of their peers. Not only that, but they are prepared to go some way to paying the soon-to-be exorbitant fees. Even with a 2/3 discount, you are still looking at £3000 a year before living costs. Why would someone place themselves under tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt unless they really, really wanted to do it? You would have to believe to the depths of your being that putting yourself at that risk was worth every penny of interest that you would be paying back for the years after you graduate. You would need to know that the choice would immeasurably improve your life, even more than going to another, cheaper, university would do.
To make such a decision cannot be easy at the best of times. So why on earth should it be made harder for those who wish it? Positive discrimination is often deplored in that it 'punishes' the worthy (read: rich). There is a reason why these people are known as 'privileged', and that privilege does not just vanish into thin air at the merest hint of its assumptions being a little eroded in a token gesture of supposed increasing social mobility.
A merit system would be fabulous. If only we could treat everyone equally! But that is not the case in education, as in many things. Some people will have better qualifications than others by virtue of them being sent to a school with greater access to education, resources and opportunity. They will be guaranteed to get the grades they need to get to a very good university, if not a top one. Some others will have gone to the nearest state school, despite it not being very good for teaching, despite there being a problem of access, despite it being ignored by the local authority as a social black-spot. What is preventing these other, unfortunate souls from these great houses of learning? Money, social class, environment...the list can go on and on.
What is 'expected' of them and their parents is wholly different. Until both sets of children have access to equal education standards, equal social and academic opportunities, equal ability teachers all with a commitment and passion for their jobs...then there really is no point in getting all huffy when a government that has already done enough to damage poor and disadvantaged pupils chances of being able to go to university attempts a feeble back-track by forcing some institutions to let in some of the brightest kids in the country.

It's New York fashion week this week. And we all know what that means.
BCBGMAXAZARIA...
Prabal Gurung, Derek Lam, Calvin Klein, Max Azria, Dianne Von Furstenberg, Carolina Herrerra, Narciso Rodriguez, Anna Sui... The list goes on...

In appreciation of Angela Carter

I just have to say something about Passion of the New Eve. I have never read Angela Carter before, but many of my friends seem to have read The Bloody Chamber. When I was set Passion... for my Queering Fictions seminar I tried to ask what I should expect from her as an author. None of them could really answer - they all uhm-ed and ah-ed, and after a great deliberation decided that she was very good to read. Helpful.

I have no idea where Carter takes her inspiration from, but her writing is some of the strangest, the most unusual I have come across. She doesn't use difficult styles. She doesn't use overtly difficult words either, or have impenetrable characterisation. Her prose is efficient, conversational and lively. Her subject matter however, is the stuff dreamy nightmares are made of. Capturing the abject - the pleasure and the pain of suffering and victimisation. Everything exists in the textual world as merely textual - something to be written upon over and again, reconstructed, deconstructed at the whim of the meta-characters. America is in the grip of chaos, and this chaos is not confined to institutional revolution - it has seeped in to the characters' own skins, enabling a fluidity of physical appearances, and particularly, of gender. Gender is exposed as something constructed through performance, and not through physiological pressures. Experiencing what has been called a 'post-transsexual' moment, Eve is aware that her new body is all that her old body desired in a sexual way, (s)he can feel the old penis twitch in her brain. It takes more than surgery to make a woman.

Carter's main metaphors of America as the New World and of the science of alchemy are particularly effective alongside the theme of transsexual experience. Many of the first sex change operations were performed in America - people would travel from Europe to the 'promised land' of a new body. The rising tide of Gay Pride movements, the Women's movement, Civil Rights - there was a context of changing power, of the marginalised being brought to comment on the failings of the past. America has always presented a chance to rewrite your history, to start afresh as something new, something better. Alchemy provides the narrative structure of Passion... The sun and the moon are used throughout as images denoting feminine and masculine sexuality; the crucible is the desert: a place of lack and thereby of beginning; the gold ingot created by the alchemist next door; the hermaphrodite, the site of true fluidity and the problems with passing. I could go on. It works incredibly well next to the Biblical metaphors of Eve as a new genesis, and Leilah, or Lilith, as the temptress who will lead to the fall of a corrupt civilisation.

It is interesting the alignment of blackness with femininity. Mother - the terrifying and grotesque self-made goddess and Leilah her daughter. There is an idea of the allying of marginalities, the construct of a greater Other. A strange reversal of the usual association of blackness with femininity that is emasculating, a castration (but Mother castrates Evelyn?).

What also is interesting is the critique of surgical answers to transsexual or transgender identities and dysphoria. It is quite interesting as the debate about how far such a gender identity must be medicalised is growing in pace. Many question why body modification, a sex change, should be something that requires a psychiatric diagnosis, when other forms of modification (like a nose job) are freely available for those who will pay.

It is the first time in a quite a while I have put a book down and have had almost no clue what I could say about it. It is quite a nice, if slightly boggling, feeling. As I get my head around it, the more I appreciate the depth and style of the novel. It may deal with some horrific and disturbing themes (I have never read such a graphically faecal book either) it does so with such a self-aware touch of camp that you can't help but enjoy it. But I guess that is the point of the abject - you enjoy it, even if you know you really shouldn't.

So long White Stripes

I am sad they are no more. I remember seeing them play right after Blue Orchid hit the scene at the Carling Academy. All the roadies were dressed in sharp black suits with little red highlights. A red handkerchief, a red shoe. All so stylish, all part of the performance.
And Jack White - what a talent. Dressed to kill in a Brazilian doll costume and pointed goatee. His smile was a little demented. Meg White - the perfect foil to his leading man. Many say she was a terrible drummer. But there was no more that she needed to do other than provide that primal thump - a baser note to Jack's guitar.
Jack White is probably one of the most talented musicians in the rock music scene. His side projects have never been quite as fabulously successful as White Stripes, but I don't think that is through his fault. I think he needs the outlets - something to take his mind off the grand performance. In all of his other bands he has taken, to an extent, a back seat - he has let the other band members speak as it were. They are never 'brother' or 'sister'. He tries to give them equal space - credit where credit is due. And yet it doesn't work quite so well as when Jack is Jack White.
I guessed that after Meg had a breakdown and Jack started a family they would be no more. Took a year or two to say it, but they have finally spat it out. I don't know if it is because Meg refuses to perform any more, or whether the ship has finally sailed. Perhaps, like many good bands before them, they decided not to risk it and pull out while they still could. Except maybe this is a risk in a way. Now Jack will have to throw himself and his wealth of ideas into something else. It might all be sort of exciting to see what will happen next.

But for now, so long White Stripes. You gave me many an idle hour listening to your music, one of the only songs I can play on guitar with a kind of competence, a lasting sense of slight embarrassment whenever '7 Nation Army' came on, and much enjoyment still to come.

For Your Pleasure

There is something infinitely sleazy about Roxy Music. It's hard to put your finger on. The dancing girls, the super model album covers, coded references to illicit sex solicitation - these all add up to sleaze, but they don't quite grasp the essence of Roxy Music's sleaze. It is like an atmosphere - a coy kind of knowledge that the band have let you in on. It is Bryan Ferry's lip curl and look of studied boredom. His faintly feminine hand gestures, the batting eyelashes. It is the rhythm of their music - it's ability to sweep you along on the piercing clarinet and guitar.

For Your Pleasure is the first tour that Roxy Music have done as a full band for almost ten years. No one thought that it would happen again. Phil Manzenerra had moved on to other bands. Bryan Ferry was doing solo work (including THAT Bob Dylan cover album), playing perverts in films, and modeling for Marx and Sparx. I had gone with my mum to see them when I was about 13 at the SECC. Their "last ever" tour. My enduring memory of it is that it was very good, that I couldn't see much (though I remember they were dressed in white suits and there was a heavy crimson velvet curtain up), and that I managed to stab my spikey bracelet through my palm as I clapped. The woes of the teenage goth.

I also recall that I refused to dance for fear of social outrage at being seen (in a dark room full of other dancing older ladies) dancing with my mother. Social suicide, evidently. But also a poor way to enjoy a gig such as this. Roxy Music was made to dance to, and dance I did. Even my slightly stiff boyfriend managed a bit of a sway by the mid point.

They played some of their older, slightly more obscure things, spaced nicely with the old favourites. 'Virginia Plain' was a resounding success, with the crowd enthusiastically bopping along and screaming the infamous last lines. Another classic, 'Avalon', had everyone swaying and singing along to the silky tones. My personal highlights were 'Here's Looking at You Kid' - a beautiful song of leave and lack regret with a slight tongue-in-cheek attitude, featuring Brian Eno's enduring electronic melody and a fabulous saxophone solo; and 'Love Is The Drug' - probably my favourite Roxy Music song and one of their sexiest. And that is saying something for a band that are famed for their sex/sleaze appeal.

Another highlight was the teenager on second guitar. About 5' 5", 15 years old, and four stone dripping wet, he didn't look like he quite...belonged...next to the rest of the veteran musicians. But he was a real talent - treating the audience to a fairly spectacular five minute solo that made the audience go wild for him. I am sure there was more than one yummy mummy marking him out as a candidate for their precious daughter. I overheard some men in the lobby after the gig chatting about him, predicting his future as great. His name was Colin Thompson, and he was possibly the drummer's son. I hope he gets where he is going, because if nothing else, it was damned obvious that he loved to play.

I was in the youngest 5% of the audience, which was a shame, as I really don't think Roxy Music are a generation-specific band. They were innovative for their day, and while their music is no longer any where near to the cutting edge now, the music has not dated in the same way much of glam rock has. Despite so many new bands looking to a predecessor for inspiration, I can't think of any that sound anything like Roxy Music. Their sound is so distinct from their contemporaries, and yet there is a certain something that is perhaps too difficult to translate in to modern music.

You could hardly believe that the men on stage were in their pension years. Bryan Ferry can still command an audience with ease. My mother came out of the gig eyes gleaming having seen the great man himself from a mere six feet. Amazing that someone who is less than a decade younger than my grandpa can have so much magnetism. It was a brilliant night, enjoyed to the full by every single person in the hall. I just hope they decide to reform one more time in the near enough future.



On a wee side note: the merch was awesome. I got myself a Country Life album cover t-shirt. Who can resist two semi-naked German models on their chest?

A small thought.

I foresee that the maxi dress is really not going anywhere any time soon. The minis just seem so lack-lustre in comparison when going down the catwalk.

Another small thought: everyone has been harping on about palazzo pants and wide leg trousers. But really...I think the straight and tailored is in. Cigarette pants all the way.

Next up - precious stone colour schemes. Jade. Gotta get me some jade.

Givenchy

The Givenchy collection is a stunning little masterpiece.

A tiny capsule of perfection. Each dress wholly unique and completely beautiful. I was slightly taken aback by it. Givenchy is one of those houses, which, much like Dior and Chanel, you have a vague idea that it's collection is going to be very lovely, very elegant, but perhaps not too revolutionary a great deal of the time. However these pieces have proven me quite wrong. I know I have not been following the fashion world for long enough to comment really, but this a truly stunning collection and one that is a testament to the longevity of this house.

Inspired by the traditional Japanese dance art 'butoh', Riccardo Tisci really has managed to take Givenchy to new heights. Butoh is a dance form that typically involves playful and grotesque movements, interpreting taboo subjects with exaggerated movements and a disturbingly slow and focused facial expression. Both beautiful and disturbing, it is perfectly captured in the Givenchy designs.
Each dress from the front appears to be a lovely creation in silk, chiffon and mesh fabrics. All intricately embroidered with Oriental designs. However, as the models turn:

Et Voila! A whole other dress! A fabulous splash of hot colour right across the back. A splendid little shock of luminous silk. How wonderful.

Also - Asian models. I know the theme is Japanese, but to have all-Asian models for a Paris haute couture show is really quite rare. Perhaps it shows the influence of Japanese Vogue and the growing Asian couture sector. Either way, a controversial, and fairly welcomed move. For such a veteran house as well. You have to take the small victories.

Armani Spring/Summer 2011 Haute Couture

It is strange that, despite all being of the one fashion week, there is barely a single note of similarity between two of the high profile shows: on one hand we have Galliano and his reworked New Look - full of fantasy, beautiful silhouettes and a true sense of glamour and elegance; on the other hand we have Armani Prive.
Armani is the king of good tailoring. His looks are always smart, sleek and full of a tight elegance. In both menswear and ladies fashion, it is the Armani suit which carries the collection through. His look is always ornate but never whimsical. He tends to set new trends and yet never pushes the boat too far into the stormy seas of the totally unwearable/totally covet-able.

The Spring/Summer 2011 collection is one of the most innovative I have seen of Armani in recent years. A continuation of his lunar theme from last year's collection, this year it has been taken to dizzying new heights. Apparently his inspiration this year was a treasure chest - and the clothes certainly do remind of a beautiful gem discovered, not on Earth, but on Mars. These clothes are made with incandescent fabrics and plastic detailing. They shimmer as the lights hit them. Combined with metallic flying-saucer hats (designed by Philip Treacey!) pulled low over the eyes, the models have taken on an alien look that complements the clothes while reinforcing the concept of the collection.In terms of the cuts: The straight style dress with a drop exposed waist doubling as a pocket skirt is a new silhouette for Armani. It is an interesting extension of the 1920s straight flapper dress cut, as well as a departure from the strict body-tailoring that is the norm. I don't know how wearable they are though. Dior's clothing may be fantastical, but I can see Galliano's collection out on full display on the undeserving red carpet. These dresses however, as truly beautiful as they are, may just be a shade too brave for any aspiring and insipid starlet.The other, and less exciting and no less lovely, designs of the collection are more to the Armani brand - fitted bodices, incredibly well-cut cigarette leg trousers and a lot of embellishment.

Two of the cuts that really interested me were a jacket with an assymetric cowl neckline and dresses that had a kind of ellipses effect at the waist exposing not skin (hurrah! down with the peep-hole!) but a lovely red ruby satin.Armani seems to be furthering the trend for jewel bright colours - Prada's collection last year featured that luminous jade that is going to be all over the place (as proven by the recent Golden Globes carpet) and Armani appears to be pushing for a wider trend of gem-brights.The shatter effect as embellishment on some of the pieces will hopefully steer the high street away from the full sequin - it would be nice to take a little bit of change on.

This collection is luxurious in it's innovations. I only hope it might cause the high street to challenge itself a little. I can't afford anything from Armani, but I can stretch to H and M. What pains me most is that collections like this almost never filter down - it is so much more expedient for the high street chains to stick to the nude, minimalist, soft tailoring thing that they have had going on for the past however long. I don't want to be nude and soft! I want to wear fuchsia lipstick and appear as though beamed down from another world!

A new direction

So, I am feeling a new direction. New heart, and new thrill. All because of the Galliano for Dior Spring/Summer 2011 Paris Haute Couture show.
Having waxed lyrical about the sheer brilliance of the show, both flatmates have requested that I should maybe write my ardour down. Probably so they don't need to hear about it. So I think a new direction is called for here - a bit of inspiration - I am going to write all that I love. And what I truly love is fashion. I love the performance, the drama: dressing up and dressing down. I love a gown that I can move within that makes you feel like you might be wearing a masterpiece. I look at the shows on the catwalks, and I see the beautiful works of art gliding.
I know some people condemn high fashion; they say it is too expensive, unrealistic, ridiculous, not for the average person. And this is true. It isn't, and nor is it pretending to be. Just as an art collector must know, the most beautiful paintings are often the most expensive. An original copy of Dickens will set you back the cost of a brand new BMW. There are wines that sell for thousands and thousands of pounds. All masterpieces in their own way; so why not fashion?

Galliano's collection has captured some of this marvel. His pieces are generally beautiful. All dramatic, all show-stopping. And yet there is something about this particular show that has set it apart. One expects Galliano's collections to be over the top and slightly ridiculous in the sheer amount of ruffles he has managed to graft into one frock. In fact, one expects it to the extent that it has, in recent years, perhaps lost some of it's magic. But this year, the magic is most definitely back. And boy, does it sparkle and shine.