District L

Trend, as a season by season notion, is becoming less relevant. Designers have been revisiting past work to figure out what has been successful and strategically redesigning these pieces to suit the taste of the current consumer. The styling and merchandizing of looks has become increasingly more important as mood rather than trend becomes the zeitgeist of the creative process. The noughties have been volatile and truculent times, a period of refreshing redefinition in much of the western world across all boards from politics and economy to global and cultural affairs; war, disaster, fame, and recession have all made their mark. The magical thing about fashion is that all of humanity, in one way or another, is a direct participant in its conception and function; fashion is directly informed by the story of the human race. Fashion designers look to this, with both past and present influencing the synthesis of a collection.

The spring/summer 2010 season is the starting point of a gradual segue into a new paradigm for both the industry and the individual, as the fashion community attempts to define itself within the context of the last decade. The nineties, the eighties, the seventies, etc., all have immediately identifiable aesthetics-what of the noughties? Availability and agility of information sped up the dissemination of style and the flow of the fashion cycle has become ever truncated; consumers become bored with fashion quicker, and this in tandem with the current economic situation has galvanized designers into becoming more innovative with the thought process behind their collections.

However, to which designers can today’s dedicated followers of fashion look for successful, cohesive executions of these design principles? Look no further than Riccardo Tisci, the design genius behind Givenchy. The spring/summer 2010 Men’s collection for the label is a milestone for the decade, a unique and intelligently crafted synthesis of decades and cultures. A closer look at Tisci’s designs reveals influences from two very different sources: nineties American music culture and the Islamic world. Since Tisci took the helm at Givenchy in 2005 after graduating from Central Saint Martin’s, his highly conceptual design aesthetic garners mixed reviews. Wildly more successful than his predecessors, however, he has become a force to contend with in the industry.

As the decade immediately preceding the noughties, the events of the nineties had a tremendous impact on the past ten years. The industry looks to these influences for inspiration, and Tisci’s collection embodies them better than any other designer. There is a pleasing variety in the design and styling of the looks: tasteful, minimalist suits paired with crisp, hidden-button shirts and built in cummerbunds, oversized shirts and deconstructed drop-crotch pants in tartan and tribal prints sporting intricate gold metal detailing, and athletically inflected tops in mesh and metallic finish. Consider the culture, events, and characters that arose around the music of the early nineties: Kurt Cobain and Nirvana popularized the mosh-pit hardcore scene, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube were key members of Niggaz With Attitude (N.W.A.)-a cardinal hip-hop group of the gansta rap sub-genre. The fashion that emerged from these two very different musical influences followed very similar stories with color, merchandizing, and silhouette. Grunge and punk had a heavy emphasis on dark colors, studs, leather, mesh and tartan prints while hip-hop focused on similarly dark palettes with gold accents, chains, athletic wear and tribal prints; furthermore, a slouchy, layered, deconstructed silhouette was critical for both.

The influence from the Islamic world, in particular the Middle East and North Africa, is also quite apparent in Tisci’s work with prints inspired by the Kefiyah, ethnic Berber and Chiadma tribal motifs, arabesque geometric patterns, headscarves, and innovative sandal-like footwear. The gold and metallic accents, loose deconstruction, and black, red, and white palette are qualities shared and inspired by both the musical and Arab influences. Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa rampaged in the early nineties, and for much of the decade all eyes were on the region; the Gulf War, Muammar al-Gaddafi controversies in both Libya and abroad, and the Western Sahara conflict between Morocco and Spain were all key events that characterized much of the Arab world to the western eye by way of the media. As clever as Tisci’s juxtaposition of these two very different rich cultural sources is, the question remains as to why he chose them as the inspirational framework for his collection. If nothing else, it is an innovative take on the intersection between east and west- as America and the Middle East often find themselves at odds with each other, weaving their respective cultures into such a singular concept is both extremely difficult and extremely relevant. The designer stated that the main theme of the collection was “Latino boy goes to Morocco”, which was apparent- Tisci continually uses his “Latino boy” as the muse for his menswear line. The designer is also known for the gothic edge he likes to imbue into his looks, which meshes well with “the mosh-pit couture that defined his first two menswear lines for Givenchy,” as the Style.com review of the show mentioned. As his grungey-gothic look has gained popularity, the decision to apply it within the parameters of his Moroccan theme may have finally hit the mark he’s been searching for.

Motif and pattern in Islamic art served a quasi-transcendental function, elevating an object onto a plane above the ordinary; in an interesting parallel, Riccardo Tisci’s showing for Givenchy featuring these same motifs and patterns achieves a similar effect on the fashion industry, pioneering the design process for a new paradigm in fashion conceptualism. Keeping all of this in mind, the genius behind the Givenchy Men’s spring/summer 2010 collection is that Tisci successfully considered all of these influences and melded them with the modern, minimalist sensibility that has been a seminal influence on fashion. It is fair to say that structure and minimalism could very well be identified by future designers as the outstanding motif of early twenty-first century fashion. Tisci recognized the importance of this aesthetic and successfully combined it with an intelligent, relevant nineties edge while simultaneously taking care to craft a collection of relatively basic sportswear separates that can easily be carried into future seasons. It’s a perfect trifecta of masterful, erudite design that bridges decades, cultures, and generations - a truly cosmopolitan collection that can keep pace with an increasingly borderless, rapidly changing world.

-Post by Nicolas Sera-Leyva

Henry Holland, one of a handful of designers now carrying London Fashion Week.

It is apparent that the fashion industry has been undergoing a deep reassessment. The economy, and the negative impact it has had on the consumer has galvanized the industry into re-evaluating its role and function. Like a multi-national forced into bankruptcy, the fashion world has taken an objective look at itself and decided that the only option is to scale back, trim the fat, and streamline operations. A corporation, however, is a singular, regimented entity with controlled flows of management; the fashion industry is a loose federation of designers, companies, and other individuals that collectively form the business of fashion. How does an entity so plural and so volatile begin to organize itself for change?

One of the more notable shifts in industry activity the past few years has been the slow decline of Milan and London as fashion centers. A decade ago, London Fashion Week was a full week-long event like all the others boasting a full repertoire of heavy-hitters like Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Preen, Hussein Chalayan, and Alice Temperley of Temperley London. Now, ten years later, McCartney and Chalayan have defected to Paris to reposition themselves among the traditionally higher end labels shown in that city; McQueen, Preen, and even Temperley London now show only in New York City for similar reasons. London Fashion Week is now more of a Fashion Long-Weekend where incumbent Burberry Prorsum and maverick House of Holland headline while supporting a rather rag-tag roster of lesser known independent labels.

Lately, Milan seems to have started down the catwalk to a similar fate. This past Fall 2010, the week-long event was truncated into four densely packed days due to Anna Wintour’s tight schedule; it’s hard to say whether Paris or New York would have ever buckled to same pressure. Although Milan has a hearty line-up every year with the likes of Gucci, Fendi, Versace, and Dolce & Gabbana, they too support an otherwise unknown collection of independent Italian designers; the same couldn’t necessarily be said for London ten years ago.

With New York and Paris as the remaining true, unwavering juggernauts of this multi-billion dollar industry, will the focus shift away from London and Milan entirely? Will there be a mass exodus of designers from Milan to New York and Paris? It leaves one to wonder how the industry will evolve over the next decade, as it crafts itself into a more slender, more lithe incarnation more capable of negotiating a changing world.

Post by Nicolas Sera-Leyva

Utilitarian; functional; classic- the anti-trend for Spring 2010 until who knows.

"If you're never trendy, you're never not trendy,” ADAM designer Adam Lippes once said in an interview with us; at the intersection of avant-garde fashion and economic turmoil, there is the death of the trend.

Fashion Weeks always represent a punctuation of some sort in the larger story of where fashion is headed- from the exclamation mark of Fall 2009 to the blunt period a year later during Fall 2010, the obsession with change in the industry is slowly taking a backseat to the need to successfully market timeless design to cash-strapped customers.

The radical paradigm shift on the runway in the past year has led many to question just how relevant the concept of trend will be in a few years. This is an age where consumers of fashion are investing more in classics and less in trendiness; the disposable income to cycle through entire wardrobes by season is simply not there.

Perhaps the current economic situation has lent a more egalitarian air to the industry; silhouettes have toned down and proper merchandising and accessorizing have taken priority. Designers are pulling the edge and flash out of their aesthetics and instead looking back to their own past work in order to figure out what was successful and how to best tweak those designs into a modern context.

Until the world takes a fiscal turn for the better, market demand for high quality, timeless classics will supersede that for conceptual designs that change radically from season to season. The manifestations of the change that drives the fashion industry in the first place will continue to be demure for the foreseeable future. However, as the situation improves and society extricates itself from its economic mire, customers can expect to see designers once again broach experimental territory.

-Post by Nicolas Sera-Leyva