Sander Lak’s stuff at the Sies Marjan studio in Manhattan, as photographed by Marcelo Gomes.
“Last February, Sander Lak’s fifth collection for Sies Marjan revealed the creative director’s chromatic kinship with Douglas Sirk, the filmmaker whose work is synonymous with 1950s melodramas and the saturated miracle of three-strip Technicolor. “I am contriving to paint with a strange brush,” noted Sirk, in a 1978 Film Comment interview. Two decades prior, François Truffaut remarked of Sirk’s work, that his use of color was “vivid and frank,” and “varnished and lacquered to such a degree that a painter would scream.” Truffaut continued: “They are the colors of the luxury civilization, the industrial colors that remind us that we live in the age of plastics.”
Vivid. Frank. Strange. Plastics. The same words could be used to describe Lak’s vision, who sent models—women and men—down the runway in a parade of lush materials; each garment acquiring heightened brilliancy from how Lak’s designs seemed possessed by contrast. By conflict. By blue as it bleeds into red. The unlikely sophistication of a crinkle. And how startling it is to experience the emotive properties of a leather trench colored intestinal-pink.
Shimmering metallics in russet, puce, rainbow—one dress resembling the green patina of oxidized copper—were wrapped in black tulle or layered under psychedelic shearling in mint and merlot. Varying degrees of purple, from morning glory to plum and periwinkle, felt somehow hypothetical in their range. There were dull shades, too; a whole spectrum of sea urchin.
While the show’s hued carousel of hammered satin and crêpe de chine was appealingly languid, floating across the runway with an air of indifference, there was tension. Little torments. A sense of anxiety typified by Lak’s signature cinching and folds. Those errant puckers and rosettes. What he calls “the phonetics of clothes.” These details that make a cashmere sweater seem self-possessed but not prim or supercilious. Cashmere sweaters that are dark and twisted. The Fall/Winter Sies Marjan runway was pure melodrama, insisting on visual climax after visual climax, and bringing to mind Lauren Bacall’s blue flush in Written On the Wind or Jane Wyman’s cherub face—prismatic, stricken—in All That Heaven Allows.”
With beautiful photographs by Marcelo Gomes
durgapolashi reblogged
Me and Fifi
My piece on 9 1/2 Weeks for Adult Mag (quote below) which relates to this week's Adult Mag panel on Clothes & Class
“Don’t move. I wanna look at the outline of your body,” John instructs Elizabeth as he tilts a lamp towards her, casting dusty bedroom light over her and her white button-down shirt. Through it, we can see her waist —— where it caves and rounds —— and her crescent breasts, but really, all we’re seeing is what we’re half-seeing. Her shape is perceived through another shape.
Throughout 9 ½ Weeks, Basinger drowns in shapes: heavy cable-knit sweaters, cocooning cardigans, asymmetric collars, boots and wool socks that ruche at her ankles, shirts that droop in shades like pale rose, ecru, mauve. Her everyday coat is a faded grey linen trench that parachutes on her body and prompts a certain floppiness as if she might, at any moment, pull Harpo faces or waddle down the street like Charlie Chaplin. At one point she asks John, “You know, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be one of the guys.” He buys her a suit and a mustache, and at the Algonquin, she pantomimes her impression of masculinity for kicks.
But there’s also something sensual about the fit of her clothing. The weight of a sweater three or four sizes too big has an uncanny way of conceiving the nude beneath the bulk. Like women who cover their faces with their long hair or only wear black, Basinger portrays a woman who swaths agitation in fabric, clutching the loose creases of her sleeves, or burrowing in the broad shoulders of her coat ——"
AND HERE, quotes from the panel:
FIONA: "There are different modes of inconspicuous chic. There are garments so soft, so supple, that your body feels awakened like by the fluttering fingers of a kind lover after you’ve popped a klonopin; that’s a pleasure-oriented luxury."
DURGA: "I sometimes feel like I have sought invisibility as a way of fitting in: wearing all black, unflattering shapes, nothing tight, uniform-ease, little to no color, trousers with pockets for feeling like I have a purpose."
KATHERINE: "I like feeling completely simple——which is different than looking unremarkable——in something that has some depth. I can walk, sit cross legged on the floor, slouch, jump into a hug, but there’s absolutely recognizable effort. Layers, texture, tension, whatever."
FIONA: "I shop not-anxiously but actively. I’m discriminating. Then, ideally, I can fling whatever on without thinking too much about it."
ARABELLE: "But anxiety is part of my identity, and I like clothes that bring it out. If I have to suffer this mortal coil, you’re gonna hear about it. Everything I do is out of the anxious death drive, let’s be real."
HARI: "I first experienced luxury as something so unattainable it wasn’t even material. Fashion was more about inspiration, options, and propositions. Tips and tricks! (...) So there’s a part of me that wants to say that I first experienced minimalism as an early brand of the most personal feminism. I did not know that I wanted to be a woman when I first heard the word “minimalism,” but I was certainly well on my way to forming an Ideal Woman in my head, one who eventually became so big beautiful and hungry that I would have to start turning into her. Fashion came first, Minimalism came second, and the rest is history."