The connection between fashion and death has been widely analysed in previous posts in this blog.
Bizarrely enough, death “resurrects” itself season after season on the runways, through clothes with banal skull prints or in jewellery and dresses inspired by the complicated configurations of bones.
Yet, while in the past this macabre reference was often used almost to exorcise the fear of death, in the last few years there has been an emphasis on more oppressive and apocalyptic moods, in a nutshell on a “requiem style” with some disturbing - yet at the same time very fake (I often wonder if some of the designers who explored such themes in their collections ever saw a corpse in their lives...) - connotations.
Throughout the decades we have seen fashion shows mimicking a funeral wake, bruised and battered models wrapped in clingfilm or emerging from the darkness of the runway like ghosts of murdered women or car crash victims; we have witnessed glamour being turned into horror, pleasure into sickness, high fashion into violence and logos being transformed into bleeding wounds.
So far, though, designers focused on the life-in-death nature of fashion, exploring the possibilities of seeing life through deathly themes, intertwining decay, decadence, sex and money together.
The current and future trends have instead gone beyond the “mourning phase” to explore a more disturbing stage in the representation of transience and the ephemeral essence of beauty.
There was great anticipation for the Thierry Mugler’s menswear show in Paris, since this was the first one by newly appointed Creative Director, stylist and fashion editor Nicola Formichetti.
Yet from the dark and macabre teasers by photographer and filmmaker Mariano Vivanco posted on Formichetti’s blog in the days before the catwalk and showing a young man shedding a second skin-like latex black mask to reveal skeleton tattoos all over his face and body and from the title of the Autumn/Winter 2011-12 collection itself, “Anatomy of Change”, you already guessed that the focus has shifted from the old life-in-death metaphor to the death-in-life realm.
As Lady Gaga’s played in the background, models with heads and faces covered in black paint and latex masks that only revealed blood-shot eyes walked on a runway covered in a grey sand-like material that looked more like the cremated remains of thousands of bodies.
The collection mainly focused on black and dark blue with bright splashes of neon orange used for suits or for the details of the gloves, a strong colour that broke into the darkness like a fresh wound bleeding on porcelain white skin.
Drama couldn't be detected in the designs, though, but in the styling and in the models, especially in Rick Genest, covered in scary and deathly tattoos.
Formichetti, Romain Kremer and Sébastien Peigné seemed not to be able to decide if they wanted to go for streamlined or relaxed/baggy silhouettes, long/oversized or cropped jackets (at times matched with metal breastplates), so they included both.
Latex aprons and skirts called to mind Alexander McQueen’s leather aprons from the A/W 2009-10 season, and even the accessories – pearl necklaces as white as bones, latex gloves and arm pieces that wouldn’t look out of place in a murderer’s wardrobe – went well with the oppressive and dark atmosphere.
The translucent and floating veils that covered the faces of the models towards the end of the show called to mind instead the veiled mourning figures crying on tombstones or Giuseppe Sanmartino's Veiled Christ (even though they weren’t used to symbolise any kind of hidden or poetical meanings such as the body as an obstacle to real spiritual freedom...).
From the post-mortem femme fatale - a skeletal object of terror still oozing some kind of erotic power - we have now passed to the post-mortem homme fatale, embodied by Genest covered in skeleton tattoos and wearing ripped leather trousers as if he had just climbed out of a grave.
Visually speaking the show was undoubtedly rather strong, yet there wasn’t enough in terms of innovation for what regarded the designs (in fact some of the clothes featured wouldn't have looked out of place in a magazine from 1991 - I'm sure that if we all tried to, we would actually remember where we actually saw twenty years ago those trousers with padded motifs between the knee and the ankle...).
The impeccable styling distracted a lot from the actual clothes and Mugler’s strong tailoring went somehow lost in all the deathly references.
There were echoes of Mugler in the sharp and strong shoulders, and rigid materials, but, rather than hinting at Mugler’s cyber universe populated with ambiguous superheroes, futuristic materials such as plastic and nylon evoked the disturbing consistence of plastic sheets left to cover a brutally murdered body.
This dystopian deathly world with just some superficial tailoring also called to mind Walter Benjamin’s “frivolity/death” dichotomy, though it reinterpreted, dissected, transformed and repackaged it for the digital generation, hungry for strong and unsettling visual images, but unable to define, spot and recognise substance, quality and traditions.
Who knows, maybe the future of fashion stands in this sort of Baudelairian "Danse Macabre" without Baudelaire’s allegories; maybe being "fashion forward" means to be able to put up a circus-like facilis descensus Averni - to put it in Virgil’s words - for the Facebook and Twitter generation.
For the time being Formichetti has confirmed he is an extraordinary communicator, able to capture the attention of artists, creative minds and fashionistas.
It remains to be seen if not having any proper tailoring skills can actually take you anywhere in the fashion world even in our instant and fake Facebook world.
I have a feeling, though, that if Giacomo Leopardi were alive today, rather than writing his “Dialogue between Fashion and Death”, portraying them as sisters continually employed in the destruction and change of all things, he would go for a “Dialogue between Fashion, Death, Facebook and Twitter”, children of transience, born out of decadence and decay.
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