Saturday, July 25, 2009

The Fashion Show post-mortem

Well, I am pleased that Anna has won. I was a fan since show 2 and the pleated pencil skirt (to be fair, I am such a sucker for pencil skirts), and I was happy to see her get her due. A few pieces from the final collection are being sold on Bravo website, except that the dress I loved last week isn't there. Not that I would actually buy it, but I'm surprised that it was overlooked.

I was a bit sad for James-Paul, who is adorkable. I also loved him when he said that there's plenty of time to make sensible wearable clothes, but the runway show was his one chance to show his vision. I have a lot of respect for his integrity; I also liked how he resisted being molded, and that he was very explicit about how his cultural heritage and being a PoC affected his aesthetic sensibility. I sincerely hope that Comme des Garcons hires him. It's the house that comes to mind in terms of fitting his sensibilities without demanding a compromise. This is what I mean:




The rest of Fall 2009 RTW collection -- seriously, take a gander. Monochromatic and beautiful.

I was frankly surprised that Daniella was the judges' choices. I mean, I understand why -- she is young, she's on trend, and her clothes could be sold at Forever 21 tomorrow. And the show was supposed to be about wearability and daily utility (incidentally, this why it's not Project Runway -- totally different point). Still, while Anna stuff was beautifully constructed and pretty and fun and James-Paul's was just interesting and genius, Daniella's was neither. It was all right. She did a lot of shoulder pads, and she's 22 -- too young to actually remember the eighties. I don't think anyone who does could wear shoulder pads non-ironically. I guess at a show like that I want to see people either bucking the trend or inventing their own, not catering to the most recent and the most uninspired.

Overall, I enjoyed this season and I hope they come back. I also hope that they will learn not to make fun of people with accents. Seriously, Isaac Mizrahi.

2 comments:

Who is this Writer? said...

I hereby challenge you to combine Steampunk and fashion in your next novel.

Fish Monkey said...

In a novel I just finished I did exactly that. Cutting edge fashions of 1853; does that count?