NY TIMES August 25, 2005 By
CATHY HORYN
Who's Afraid of Minimalism?
QUITE a few fashion designers have everything it takes, and more, to be minimalists. They have an excess of talent to make clean lines out of ornamental ones, yet they lack the will or the stamina to hold unpopular views, and minimalism has been out of vogue for a good 10 years.
Even its greatest practitioner, Giorgio Armani, today adds more than he subtracts. And to some extent we associate minimalism with failure - the failure of Jil Sander and Helmut Lang to continue under Prada ownership.
It's encouraging, then, to see so many designers this season doing something spectacularly out of character and at the same time commercially sensible. You would never think to call Alexander McQueen a minimalist. He usually pursues more exotic themes, like the style of an Amazon tribe, but this fall, pursuing Tippi Hedren's femme fatale character in "The Birds," he came up with plain slim-fitting coats and suits. Huge is how Evelyn Gorman, a boutique owner in Houston, characterized demand for Mr. McQueen's pencil suits.
"And our customers want the whole look, the shoes, the bag," she said. "If he showed an outfit with gloves, they'd want the gloves, too."
Almost all the designers getting special notice in the September fashion issues - Miuccia Prada, Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga, Olivier Theyskens at Rochas - have behaved more like minimalists than like showmen or decorators. Others, like Ralph Lauren, Roland Mouret and Francisco Costa at Calvin Klein, also proved farsighted, and the minimalist Narciso Rodriguez just had to sharpen his seams.
When these designers showed their collections in February and March, editors and buyers were struck merely by the leaner silhouette after seasons of frothy volume. Ms. Prada scraped off most of the ornamental trim, and though she still had volume in the dropped full sleeves, say, of a black wool suit, the news was in her straight, over-dyed camel coats, which she closed with rough leather belts.
Mr. Theyskens, one may recall, began his career at Rochas with lace and humpback dresses. He seemed to get carried away with couture techniques until this season, when his clothes became vividly modern, with long skirts and snug matching jackets.
Mr. Ghesquiere had the sharpest silhouette in Paris, achieved by drawing on the 1960's minimalism of André Courrèges, who was an assistant to Cristobal Balenciaga, and by using stiff, grainy fabrics that hold their form: another Balenciaga tradition. Mr. Ghesquiere's new clothes may have been souped up with fox trim and silver hardware, but the cut was all about subtraction.
For Susan Fales-Hill, a writer, the pared-down silhouette squares with her own tastes. "I think of a lot of fashion in the past couple of years became too youthful, too over the top, too silly," she said. "I love a sharp line. To me Prada's black jacket with the full sleeves and the portrait neckline is just exquisite. It's timeless. Now a lot of the looks for fall are not innovative. They remind me of clothes my mother wore in 1965. But it's a beautiful way to dress. And maybe it will mean the end of beads on day clothes. Call me a traditionalist."
Ms. Gorman, whose shop, Mix, also carries Rochas and Balenciaga, says she has had a good response to these collections: "They're serious clothes, and they're easy clothes for a woman to go into her closet and put on. There's no question mark over them." She added that while many of her customers liked the floaty ruffled looks of the last few seasons, they gradually found them too contrived and too youthful. To her, fall was more than a shift, "it was a leap into mature dressing."
Ronald Frasch, the vice chairman and chief merchant of Saks Fifth Avenue, agreed. "I think people like a more ordered way of dressing, and quite frankly we've heard from a lot of customers who wondered why we didn't have it sooner," he said, noting that at the men's shows in June he was struck by how much better - more up to date - the men in the audiences looked than the women, in part because they had on classic suits.
Still, Mr. Frasch said, he expects to encounter some resistance to the pared-down silhouette. He said that many customers have an emotional response to flounced skirts and bright colors. By comparison a mod-inspired minicoat in black wool or a tweed pencil suit is more subdued and sophisticated. "They're not as visually exciting as what we had in the store," he said. "Customers are going to have to be sold on the look. It's a dramatic change."
Dawn Brown, the spokeswoman for Barneys New York, said that young trendy customers are going for Balenciaga's new elongated trousers, but that's in part, she said, because they like wearing the skinny denim styles from the store's Co-op. Other customers are displaying more caution and buying the easier, more fluid McQueen and Balenciaga looks. And Mr. Frasch suggests there is likely to be an increasingly divided market between casual clothes and sophisticated suits. Weekend clothes will still be a mix-and-match game. "The next evolution in denim is more embellished," he added.
Mr. Frasch hesitates to call the fall clothes minimalist. "To make the look work in today's world you need something exciting - a strong shoulder line, more detail," he said. "People are used to buying clothes that say, 'What about me?' "
Mr. Costa at Calvin Klein agreed. "It's not the 90's minimalism, that's for sure," he said. "There was something not very approachable about that look." Still, as he begins to choose fabrics for fall 2006, he foresees the streamlined trend continuing. "It's almost an Armani thing that has to come back," he said. "It's ready to come back."
And with Raf Simons, the Belgian men's wear designer, starting at Jil Sander - he is to present his first men's and women's collections in February - minimalism will get more attention, if not more respect.
Meanwhile you can hedge your bets by wearing a sleek skirt or pair of trousers with a gust of volume on top. A number of designers, including Stella McCartney and Marc Jacobs (in both his own collection and that for Louis Vuitton), combined a romantic gesture with a masculine one. Mr. Jacobs, for instance, showed loose tops and boxy jackets with boyish trousers. It will be surprising if Ms. McCartney's cocooning sweaters are not copied. After seeing all the flouncy skirts on the street this summer, you're probably ready for an about-face.
Another way to look casually up to date - and sexy - is to pair a pencil skirt with a swingy jacket (Burberry's draped-back pea jacket looks like a cape) or one of Zac Posen's Moorish-looking blouses.
But if the early spring 2006 collections are an indication of what's to come, don't expect fashion to lose its new minimalist clarity. Some designers have been looking at early Zoran styles, others at the cool white simplicity of the Southwest. In Paris last month Alber Elbaz at Lanvin showed plain navy wrap dresses, which brought to mind the most sensible of all minimalists, the American designer Claire McCardell.