Dressful

Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2007: A collection whose t-shirts were not just t-shirts.

Rei Kawakubo is a senior voice in Japanese design, and, in a broader sense, a foreign ambassador for all that can be creative and free-thinking about her nation. In a way—an allusive way, admittedly—she acknowledged that fact for the first time in her spring collection. A giant red spot, the symbol of the Japanese flag, was unmistakably at the center of her collection. "To me," she said, "It is the purest form of design in existence."

Since Japan is at a highly sensitive turning point, with an assertive new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, having just been voted in, it was hard not to see that red spot as the elephant in the Comme des Garçons room. Kawakubo is a channeler of emotion, of course, not a political agitator or commentator. But she took the opportunity to stamp her feelings about the "pure" Japanese ethos in the words printed below the red circles on her T-shirts: "radiant nature," "simplicity, nature, beauty," and "grace and nature." – Sarah Mower

It's hard to impress me with a t-shirt, but Rei Kawakubo did it in 2006. I saw myself in "grace and nature" - or, perhaps, what I wanted to be (fashion is always about what you want to be). An entire human character in two words, pure and simple.

If I had found the t-shirt anywhere that year, it would have been my first Comme piece.

Prabal Gurung Fall 2011 campaign featuring Julia Saner, shot by Daniel Jackson, styling by Tiina Laakkonen.

Are you in the mood for fall already? I opened the season with Givenchy haute couture and continued with Alexander McQueen to make use of these precious last moments before the Spring 2012 fashion weeks commence and make Fall 2011 oh so démodé just as it was supposed to properly blossom. Will we actually get to see Fall 2011 collections in the street or will we jump straight to Spring 2012? New York, London, Milan and Paris will be warm enough to don pieces fresh off the runway (if you have connections), they always are.

I thought the use of red in Prabal Gurung's Fall 2011 collection was very beautiful. Red dresses inevitably evoke Mr Valentino, so you must work twice as hard to give them your own story. Judging by frequency of his red dresses, this leaves Mr Gurung quite unfazed, which I like because surely it's not without due respect. I'm glad red made it to the campaign photos as well. Why should fall only be about neutrals? If we don't decide to fast forward to spring trying to catch fashion's frenetic pace, let's make Fall 2011 passionate.

Cut It Out is a Hong Kong/Milan-based label in love with sequins. They shot a short film titled "Sinapsi" (Synapses) to present their Spring/Summer 2011 collection. Do you notice similarity between sequins and the octopus's suction cups? If you read Dressful often, you probably know I'm slightly obsessed with finding those peculiar connections between fashion and other fields. So beautiful.

I want to write about fall collections, but thinking about warm clothes in proverbially neutral colorways borders on impossible when you spend your afternoons at the beach so you don't have to deal with the fact that air condition in your room is broken. I'm at the seaside and life couldn't be easier (forgetting A/C's bad manners for a sec), but the new collections are tempting me so much I wish I could put my vacation on hold for a few days and whisk off to Milan to see the clothes in life, up close and personal. The sea can wait.

Givenchy Fall 2011 Haute Couture

Givenchy Fall 2011 Haute Couture by Riccardo Tisci is the compromise between my pastoral maritime state of mind and most earnest wish to dive into the next season head-first. White reminds me of summer (though it's just as beautiful in winter, I'm fascinated with the idea of wearing white so you blend in with snow ...), and so does the lightweight spirit these dresses exude through images. My initial reaction to the above photo, though seen only on a small laptop screen, was "angelic". When I saw the details, the exquisite craftmanship, I realized this collection is the kind of perfect beauty most of fashion aspires to, though it will not always admit it. Dresses for entities that transcend your regular European princesses and Hollywood actresses.

In context of Tisci's past haute couture collections for Givenchy, this one is earning him remarks that we've been seeing the same gorgeous embellished dresses for at least 2 seasons. Tisci ditching runway couture shows in favor of smaller presentations tells me he prefers a more intimate approach to couture, releasing only a few images for the public and focusing on the women who will actually buy his designs. Therefore, it makes sense the dresses are tailored to their respective wearers, literally and metaphorically. Tisci understands his clients' taste, he knows what women feel beautiful in, and if that's not success in itself, I don't know what is. His couture is not his flight of fancy. Rather, its mission is to provide a glimpse of eternity to women from the secret world where haute couture is lived, not admired from afar.

I've written about how I don't talk much about menswear on this blog, mostly because I want to learn about menswear properly before commenting on it, and maybe also because I find womenswear to be a liiiittle more exciting ... so leave it to me to fall in love with Prada Men's Spring/Summer 2012, a collection that's decidedly out of touch with masculinity in favor of parody. Miuccia Prada says she's inspired by what she hates - in this case golf, which she doesn't play. I am obsessed with cleverness and humor in fashion, and recently Prada has been spewing out strong collections that deliver both in spades - though the side effect of Women's S/S11 reaching iconic status in a milisecond was that those pieces, especially fur stoles and flatforms, will forever be regarded as exclusively "seasonal", meaning nobody will wear them next year because they will be "out" as they've literally been everywhere ... perhaps that was the point though? to sell everything (YAY, PROFIT!) and not care about how long it lasts because surely we're in for a bunch of new surprises in September.

I heard you have to be young if you want to work at Prada, and I suppose it explains the influx of these quirky concepts you either love or hate or love to hate or hate to love.

My favorite piece from the collection is the golf bag in ridiculous daisy print. Nobody wouldn't even think of taking this thing to the golf course back in the day, and now it's become the only bag you want to take to the course. An "it" bag for golf. ♥♥♥ Miuccia Prada pokes fun at golf's rigid dress code (when I still played golf more often, what saddened me the most about the dress code was that there's basically no distinction between golf womenswear and menswear, especially regarding atrocious shoes); the most genius thing about it is that you're going to see people actually playing golf wearing these parodical pieces and some of them won't even be aware of it! I say "people" instead of "men" because if these bags will be available to customers, I think there will be many, many women calling their SAs to be put on the waiting list.

To me, Prada Men's S/S12 speaks of a contemporary comic book hero. It's funny and campy and what else are comic books anyway? This is 2011 and gender boundaries aren't as strict as golf dress code any more, so the Prada hero doesn't have to be brave and mysterious like Spider-Man or Diabolik. He's a "boy of leisure", perhaps relying on a vast inheritance, who has read all the Greek classics and never gets his clothes dirty - not even when he's playing golf.

Photos from gq.com.