Your Must-Watch Fashion Show Recommendations...

[NakedAndAfraid]

Controversial opinion maybe but I love this. You could say it's meant to provoke or annoy, but whatever it's doing it's successful at it.

 

[mdmmxl]

Sadly, there is no better quality video of the full show and this video is missing the amazing soundtrack but I still think in this show, you can really see 1) how specific the true JIL SANDER style is, especially compared to the later years of Raf and Patrick at the house. 2) how important the correct design team is to translate a directors vision. Just like when Jil brought in the people from Yohji in the 90s to translate her ideas, here she clearly had people who understood her but also the current climate.

Bonus: GREAT shoes!

 

[Monsieur Cristobal]

Controversial opinion maybe but I love this. You could say it's meant to provoke or annoy, but whatever it's doing it's successful at it.

How so, controversial?
We don't all agree that she is the greatest living old master, alongside Giorgio Armani?

I love the moment at 5'55'' where the two UCOs (Unknown Clothing Objects) meet. It is like a Coco & Freja in Neptune.

The last third, with the bleeding tipi, the giant stained menstrual pad, the walking clouds... those are wedding dresses for cultures and people that don't exist yet.

It is uplifting to see an artist who knows no limits to her fantasy.
Wonderful.

 

[Lola701]

Controversial opinion maybe but I love this. You could say it's meant to provoke or annoy, but whatever it's doing it's successful at it.

Yes, I don’t find your opinion controversial at all.
I don’t care for what Rei has to propose anymore and barely look at CDG mainline but her work has a following and her devotee can love it with the valid reasons.

One thing that I would say is that I don’t think after all this year of being on that lane that she decided to create for herself, it’s still provoking. It’s necessary as a creative vision for her to express but I don’t think is provoking anymore because this is a bit what people have come to expect from Rei.

 

[mdmmxl]

Yes, I don’t find your opinion controversial at all.
I don’t care for what Rei has to propose anymore and barely look at CDG mainline but her work has a following and her devotee can love it with the valid reasons.

One thing that I would say is that I don’t think after all this year of being on that lane that she decided to create for herself, it’s still provoking. It’s necessary as a creative vision for her to express but I don’t think is provoking anymore because this is a bit what people have come to expect from Rei.

Very well put Lola, as always.

I'd also consider her work not very connected with her brand anymore, thus not so much "in discourse", as it might have been years ago. It's always good to remember that CDG, though considered an "intellectual brand" (what a strange word) has become a huge conglomerate that mostly sells mass-market collaborations with an extremely large profit margin and peter-pan-collared jackets.

 

[Lola701]

Very well put Lola, as always.

I'd also consider her work not very connected with her brand anymore, thus not so much "in discourse", as it might have been years ago. It's always good to remember that CDG, though considered an "intellectual brand" (what a strange word) has become a huge conglomerate that mostly sells mass-market collaborations with an extremely large profit margin and peter-pan-collared jackets.

Thank you.

I know it’s not the thread but my non-connection with CDG is my kind of controversial opinion. I have that other controversial opinion of not liking Hussein Chalayan.
I just don’t subscribe to that idea of very Arty, Ivory-tower ish vision of fashion very detached of any sense of reality.

I loved CDG FW2012 for example but it’s because for me, Rei, when she came to the scene, challenge the perception of fashion and in a way forced women to change their lifestyle, their approach to fashion in order to enter that world. FW2012 in that sense challenge the perception of wearability while offering a kind of very familiar representation of « clothes ».

When I look at Rei’s latest work, I see huge structures, impressive techniques but that’s it. What does it tells me about fashion? How can that proposition inspire me to challenge my perception of taste? How can it inspire me to be more daring?
I’m someone who in my perception, appreciation or consumption of fashion, enjoy to be challenged but when the challenge is just a structure, a performance or deemed as Art, I’m lost.

And indeed, the disconnect between her highest expression of creativity and her highest expression of commercialism is a bit puzzling.
Thank god, we can still find good pieces in the subs lines of that universe (particularly Junya for me).

 

[LadyJunon]

Thank you.

I know it’s not the thread but my non-connection with CDG is my kind of controversial opinion. I have that other controversial opinion of not liking Hussein Chalayan.
I just don’t subscribe to that idea of very Arty, Ivory-tower ish vision of fashion very detached of any sense of reality.

I loved CDG FW2012 for example but it’s because for me, Rei, when she came to the scene, challenge the perception of fashion and in a way forced women to change their lifestyle, their approach to fashion in order to enter that world. FW2012 in that sense challenge the perception of wearability while offering a kind of very familiar representation of « clothes ».

When I look at Rei’s latest work, I see huge structures, impressive techniques but that’s it. What does it tells me about fashion? How can that proposition inspire me to challenge my perception of taste? How can it inspire me to be more daring?
I’m someone who in my perception, appreciation or consumption of fashion, enjoy to be challenged but when the challenge is just a structure, a performance or deemed as Art, I’m lost.

I agree. My issue with CDG's runway collections is that they've become more fine-art than applied art (which is what high-fashion is at its core). It's obviously done with the intent of creating a fantasy, but the reality that these sort of collections have to supported by a plethora of diffusion lines kills that fantasy.

 

[Monsieur Cristobal]

I understand your POVs.

My first memories in fashion are Yves Saint Laurent gowns from the 90s. So from the beginning Fashion was to me something where you admire the creativity of artists (concepts like wearability or functionality had zero importance).

Rei puts a smile on my face.
She is always playful, but when you do playfulness with such integrity, it becomes something else.

The dress at minute 11, right after the "bleeding tipi": obviously it is her version of a shinto wedding dress.
You have the white brocade shiromuku and the red uchikake (in this case transformed into crosses of satin ribbon), the wataboshi cowl... Everything is there, but like imagined and drawn by a child...

Its simplicity is so radical that the piece becomes almost archaic, from a forgotten ritual... the young bride entombed in her shroud, sealed with a thread of blood...

I admire Rei like I admire paintings at Le Louvre or El Prado, because she makes my imagination fly.

At her best, she reminds me of the degree of abstraction that Cristóbal Balenciaga reached with Le Chou Noir or the 1967 one seam wedding dress.

 

[franceslions]

there are some shows that i'm obsessed with:
- Versace SS 1992 and the Atelier FW same year
- Versace FW 1994
but also the tribute collection SS 2018 and the FW 2003.
- Jean Paul Gautier SS 1994
- Chanel Paris Cosmopolite Métiers d’Art 2016/17
- Chanel FW 1992
I have to say that I love to rewatch over and over again the 90’s shows…

 

[NakedAndAfraid]

Yeah I was under the impression that the board consensus was against the more "object" oriented CDG shows of late.



I have been frustrated by them in the past as well. This fashion week however I felt like I was completely on the same page as Rei. Probably because it was a weak season for fashiony fashion overall, and in my personal life fashion does not make sense (at this point in time).



I also hypothesize that the context that in which fashion exists now (IG) exhausts every visual immediately. So actual fashion-fashion makes less sense than before. Basics make sense. Absurdly unwearable CDG costume-objects also make sense because they're about something more timeless, and the opposite of sense.