While nothing, nothing, nothing was happening this summer, I wondered where designers were going to get their inspiration from. When things are buzzing and humming along, it’s easy to have the ideas pinging around and coming to you like a submarines honing mechanism when it finds that other sub somewhere beneath.
But with business being so in the dumper, there has not been a lot of development, understandably I suppose, but I liken it more to writer’s block. It’s a dry spell that just leaves one, well, dry, the paper clean and the imagination wanting.
Given that as the backdrop, where were the designers to come up with the fresh inspiration to keep the wheels of progress spinning, especially in retail for Spring 2010? And how to speak to a market noticeably unnerved by the collapse of a world economy with a line of clothing?
Remarkably, several designers, whose collections rarely imitate each other, chose to plum the depths of societies tragedies past and present which culminated in, collectively, drum roll please……raw edges.
Okay, it’s a little literal and yet, pretty clear and given our dire retail scene especially at the luxury end, but also with what has been happening with people’s lives (unraveling much? frayed nerves, shedding), the design statement is honest while at the same time provocative (Prada suggests she was being optimistic for this collection?), emoting the rawness in the moment amidst a decline.
What’s interesting about each designer is that they were genuinely coming from a different frame of reference and the looks are each as distinct as the designer him/herself is, but this historically monumentally disruptive time we are in still wore collectively an expression of “raw edges” from some of our more noteworthy designers.
It’s worth mentioning plus I appreciate the nod and I don’t think they, being the creatives they are, could stop themselves.
Christoper Kane, designer of London’s standout collection, also plunged the depths of tragedies past by thinking about spiritual cults and the tradgey of Jonestown. How could something so lovely, almost mythical, as well as innocent arrive out of that? It’s still an expression of the breakdown of innocence from whatever reference:
