Jumat, 26 September 2014

Outside the Spectrum at Chalayan


PARIS - What to wear to the Climate March?


A friend emailed a description of the demonstration last Sunday in New York, after which she took her young son to the bathroom in Rockefeller Center. 'Dozens of zombie-eyed shoppers wandering around with multiple little satiny-cord handled, thick paper, branded shopping bags,' she wrote with some despair.


While I'm sure he is interested in making a living (hence the commissions he has taken from Vionnet and the Paris-based brand VSP), Hussein Chalayan tends to operate outside the spectrum of this bland, unthinking commerce. And his show at the Palais des Beaux-Arts on Friday morning, held in front of a white Moroccan-style trellis whose pattern was repeated on some of the clothes, seemed less a typical spring collection's homage to nature - pretty flowers, etc. - than a frank declaration of discomfiture.


'It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown,' I thought, regarding the tree print scattered over several of the dresses. Enormous-brimmed hats, whose sun protection factor I calculated at approximately 90; goggle-eyed sunglasses; and yards of billowing fabric all seemed appropriate for the dust clouds, if not the rising tides, of the projected environmental apocalypse.



Mr. Chalayan, with his renown for tailoring, also managed to sew the figure of a woman peeking out from a burqa into his final three gowns, a gesture I dare not attempt to interpret, though I can already imagine the controversy its knockoffs might incite at Urban Outfitters, Zara, et al.


Showing in an 'ephemeral space,' as the French poetically call it, at the Tui-leries an hour later, Issey Miyake continued to defy copyists, the company building on its signature pleats with a technique called '3-D steam stretch,' during which fabric grows from flat to highly textured - like one of those just-add-water toys you used to see advertised in the back of comic books. (Textile nerds can see how it's done on Facebook.)


If you are in the market for a comfy pair of pantaloons or a flying-saucer chapeau, Miyake's your brand, regardless of season. The sense of spring here came purely in colors - buttercup, periwinkle, mushroom, aquamarine - and the radiant, hopeful expression, unusual on these runways, of the young models.


The live musical accompaniment involved helium balloons suspended over old-fashioned tape recorders. As the models emerged, Ei Wada, a member of the Open Reel Ensemble, sat at an organ, earnestly pumping the pedals, and the balloons rose and fell. Listen, if you want dancing ladies, go to Rockefeller Center.


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