From Cathy Horyn NYT On The Runway
In his press notes, Derek Lam quoted passages from an art review earlier this year by Peter Schjeldahl about California minimalism. Mr. Schjeldahl said of the small art community in Los Angeles in the late 60s: “They shared a serene sensuousness that couldn’t have been more remote from New York’s principled asperity.”
He went on to refer to something the critic Dave Hickey had written about West Coast minimalism: it “is intrinsically concerned with chemistry, with the slippery, unstable vernacular of oxygen, neon, argon, resin, lacquer, acrylic, fiberglass, glass, graphite, chrome, sand, water and active human hormones. This is a world that floats, flashes, coats and teases.”
A Californian, Mr. Lam must have related to the ideas expressed in the review, and I thought I detected in his clothes a modest attempt to make a connection. One of the most striking looks in his collection — and the only example of its kind — was a long-sleeved tunic dress in pale gray cut velvet with an abstract over-dyed pattern on the front. The colors popped in random, saturated bursts. Unstable? Floating? The gray background certainly made me think of the way the light in Los Angeles seems to soften everything.
Close up the print resembles the brushstrokes of Monet.
