Thursday, February 7, 2013

Fashion Code

I'm going to take the opportunity presented by my shows today, Sachin & Babi, Erin Barr, and Elliot Evan to decipher the often inscrutable world of fashion language. Not just a simple this means that but a deeper look at what the speaker is actually saying about the clothes. For example many will say that the Sachin & Babi collection was, "body con", which is short for body conscious which translates as tight which actually has less letters than, "body con", which means it takes longer to say than tight so we should just say the clothes were tight. The word that actually came to my mind was disciplined. The clothes created an air of severe control and the models were styled accordingly. The wearer of the clothes also must possess discipline as these are designs for women who are in shape. No matter what your size you have to be in decent to good physical condition for them to look good on you. This is something I agree with by the way, we should all be as healthy as we can and designers should not encourage permissiveness by joining in the being, "obese is okay", movement.

The words that will flow around the Fall 13 collection of relative newcomer Erin Barr, she's 28 and this is her fourth season, will likely be of the, "edgy" or, "avant garde" variety mostly because there were cut outs & zippers. Perhaps they will say, "punk" or "rock" and again this means again a designer has placed a metallic adornment on a largely normal blouse or dress. How that leap gets made I am unsure. I think we need to have Lemmy Kilmister pay a visit to Steven Kolb so the fashion world can really understand what rock really is or "edgy" for that matter.

The menswear label Elliot Evan will elicit such phrases as "deconstructed", "futuristic", or perhaps even, "dystopian". Those all mean the clothes were layered and draped unevenly there was asymmetry and the leathers were raw and beat up on purpose. If you go back to H. Naoto in Japan in the late 90s & the earlier work of NYC's own Logan Neitzel & Nicholas K you'll get the picture. NYC's fashionistas love to talk about that style but never wear it. I think they are far too dainty and compulsive to wear things that aren't perfect.

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