The Cutting Class

Comme des Garçons, SS12.

Rei Kawakubo and the team at Comme des Garçons were able to tread a careful line in the exploration of female wedding gowns for the Spring-Summer 2012 collection. They gave us all the right clues to know that this collection was all about bridal wear with silk satin in whites, off whites and creams layered with fine lacework, beading and even some faux floral embellishments in soft greys and lemons.

But as ever with Comme des Garçons, the rebellion is in the execution. Where you would normally find carefully hand bound edges and french seams on a wedding gown, there was instead roughly cut necklines leaving exposed slabs of wadding. When giant-sized, voluptuous silken bows were used, they were used in a strangely creepy way, binding the models hands together. When boning was used to give the gowns structure it was not hidden discreetly away beneath layers of fine silk, it was instead made into an exterior cage that seemed to be constructed out of plastic boning and wadding.

The wadding in itself played a very important part in the collection - rounding out silhouettes and leaving all of the gowns looking thick and puffy. Not so much puffy in an unflattering way but more in a way that gave a subconscious reminder about very comfortable quilts.

The elements that gave each of the outfits their individual character were the headpieces that at times seemed to be mottled as though they were covered in spray on concrete. Or sometimes the headwear appeared as rubberised alternatives with strangely sagging theme-park faces. The black of these headpieces was also brought out in the glossy black and white paint that formed angular lines across the front of a couple of garments These angular marks, especially used so sparingly, contributed to the dark undertones that seemed to be simmering through the whole collection.

Images from Vogue.co.uk».

Burberry Prorsum, Menswear, SS12.

Although buttons and zips are always used in abundance in the collections it was nice to see some variations of fastenings, particularly in the Menswear shows. The designers featured have used the fastenings to be a functional and aesthetically pleasing part of their designs, rather than be purely utilitarian and hidden away. At Burberry Prorsum this included what hooks to be a variation on a hook and bar, or oversized hook and eye, and there was more metal hardware at Dior Homme where a ring motif was used.

At Ann Demeulemeester there was a small chain fastening that was perfectly inkeeping with the low slung drape of her garments, but there was also a handstitched detail that turns simple press studs, into shapes that looked like small wheels. Lanvin interestingly used both zips and buttons along the same closure and also used studs but in a dark contrast metal against a white coat. And at Comme des Garçons the use of toggles gave the soft tailoring a more naive look.

Images from top to bottom, all from Menswear SS12 - Image 1 Dior Homme, Images 2 & 3 Ann Demeulemeester, Images 3 & 4 Lanvin and Image 5 Comme des Garçons.

Images from Vogue.co.uk».

Comme des Garçons, Menswear, SS12.

The classic pinstripe has been appearing in a lot of collections of late and it makes for a good opportunity to see how different designers bring the pinstripe into their own context. Most often pinstripe is associated with suiting and tailored garments but even within this context there are so many variations that designers have to play with - lapel shapes, double breasted vs. single breasted jackets, different coloured grounds for the stripes, slight variations in stripe colour, using stripes on the bias, in different scales… and on and on.

Often when you see these pinstripe pieces within a larger collection these individual twists can get lost, but placed side by side with the work of other designers it makes it easier to play spot the difference to see how each designer has made the stripe feel contemporary, and to make the pin strip fit for their brand.

Comme des Garçons, Menswear, SS12.

Jil Sander, Menswear, SS12.

Lanvin, Menswear, SS12.

Umit Benan, Menswear, SS12.

Jean Paul Gaultier, Couture, AW11.

Images from Vogue.co.uk».

Comme des Garçons, SS10.

A little while ago there was a post about the colourful hair styling used for Yohji Yamamoto’s Autumn-Winter 2011 collection (Yohji Yamamoto’s Wool Top Hair») but recently I rediscovered the amazing hair styling of the Comme des Garçons Spring-Summer 2010 collection. There is something about the use of the whimsical confectionary coloured hair that offsets the more monochrome deconstruction of both designers so well. The styling definitely adds a different tone to the deconstruction, making it appear more playful and less destructive, which is the more bleak mood that deconstruction can sometimes emit.

For the hair in this collection it is uncertain what has been used to create the pastel, Marie Antoinette fairy floss effect but it looks as though it could be some sort of wadding that has been spray painted or powdered with multiple colours. It also looks as though the hair has been pierced in some sections by giant kilt pins which make for an unusual hair styling addition.

Kilt pin from House of Anoria.

Catwalk images from Vogue.co.uk». Kilt pin image from House of Anoria».

Meadham Kirchhoff Back Stage, AW11.

When it comes to the hair, make-up and accessories styling for catwalk shows there seem to be too different approaches that can be taken. The models can be cast and styled to look like carbon copies of each other, the advantages of this being that the focus is drawn away from the models and towards the clothes. It can also make the clothes seem less personal to the individual models, and instead having the models appear more as walking mannequins, representative of a certain stylised new look that accompanies the clothes.

The flip side to this is for the models to seem more different from each other and for the styling to accentuate individual features and physical quirks so that the styling of the hair and make-up complements them personally as well as the outfits that they are to be wearing. The effects is that the models appear more like characters from a film or novel, maybe the physical representation of the designers muse and generally more life-like rather than being a walking clothes hanger.

Many collections fall somewhere in between these two approaches - the styling is of course based on a theme that relates to and complements the collection, and within that brief there is room for the hair and make-up stylists to move, to create variations of the look for different models.

Below is an overview of the collections from Autumn-Winter 2011, as a snap shot of the different styling themes. There are a great deal of different approaches in the collections below. Many of them have a quite understated use of make-up and hair styling which is balanced against more complex structures, colours and prints. At other times the natural look is used as a base to which other vibrant highlights are added. The overall impression is one of restraint, none of the looks are so overworked that they draw attention away from the clothes and the most extreme styling acts only to heighten the personality of the collections.

Alexander McQueen, AW11.

Alexander Wang, AW11.

Ann Demeulemeester, AW11.

Balenciaga, AW11.

Celine, AW11.

Chanel, AW11.

Chloe, AW11.

Christopher Kane, AW11.

Comme des Garcons, AW11.

Dries Van Noten, AW11.

Erdem, AW11.

Gareth Pugh, AW11.

Givenchy, AW11.

Hermes, AW11.

Issey Miyake, AW11.

Jil Sander, AW11.

Jonathon Saunders, AW11.

Junya Watanabe, AW11.

Lanvin, AW11.

Louise Gray, AW11.

Louis Vuitton, AW11.

Meadham Kirchhoff, AW11.

Miu Miu, AW11.

Mugler, AW11.

Prada, AW11.

Richard Nicoll, AW11.

Rick Owens, AW11.

Rodarte, AW11.

Stella McCartney, AW11.

Simone Rocha, AW11.

Thom Browne, AW11.

Viktor&Rolf, AW11.

Vivienne Westwood, AW11.

Yves Saint Laurent, AW11.

Yohji Yamamoto, AW11.

Meadham Kirchhoff backstage image, photographed by Morgan O’Donovan for Dazed Digital». Catwalk images from Vogue.co.uk».

Victorian Dress: Men in Morning Dress from 1840 and Two Women in Visiting Dresses from 1852. 

There are some rules in the construction of fashion which are simply accepted and never questioned. Some are long lost traditions that have ingrained themselves in the way that clothes are made, for reasons which are still relevant. Some rules once served a practical purpose that has long since been forgotten.

One of these traditions is the way that the majority of clothing is buttoned in such a gender specific way:

• Womens garments are buttoned right over left. Buttonholes are in the right hand side of the garment.
• Mens garments are buttoned left over right. Buttonholes are in the left hand side of the garment.

There appears to be a number of myths and reasons historically to attempt to explain why this tradition was formed. At times the reasoning is based on the idea that rich Victorian women would have been dressed by their maids, and so the buttoning would have been easier to do if the button and buttonholes were the opposite of their original “mens” position. Though this seems a plausible reason, it hardly seems an insurmountable problem to have to button a garment from the other side. Maybe the women did it as a secret sign of class to each other - if a ladies buttonholes were in reverse then she was obviously being dressed by someone else.

Another more practical reason that has been rumoured is that the tradition of mens buttoning links back to uniforms worn in the military. In this theory the positioning of the buttonholes was inspired by the direction of the overlapping joins on armour, which was designed so as not to expose a weak area. This reason would fit with the way that mens jackets are traditionally buttoned, as the left side would wrap over the right, leaving any open edge to be only visible from behind if a typically right handed person fights with their left shoulder forward.

Another reason is based on the practicality of a woman riding side saddle. Supposedly a woman would ride with her legs over the left side of a horse, leaning her right shoulder forward. By having “female” buttoning of right over left, she would be less likely to have her blouse blow open in the wind. A more domestic reason is that the right over left buttoning was easier for women when breastfeeding, as they typically nursed on their left side, closest to their heart.

Considering the fact that there is so much confusion over this matter it is a wonder that the tradition has survived for as long as it has. The majority of designers adhere to the tradition, though increasingly womens trousers and jeans are done in the same way as mens.

Because of all this, buttoning can also be used as small a detail to play on gender stereotypes and androgyny. Comme des Garçons was one such collection that was shown recently whose buttons and buttonholes were used on both sides of the garments, and due to the half and half nature of the clothes this seems as much an act of practicality as it one of gender subversion.

Comme des Garçons, AW11.

Catwalk images fromVogue.co.uk». Victorian images from FashionEra» and TMSArchives». 

Sometimes even the most beautiful things can end up ruined by over use. Sequins can conjure up a vision of the most glamourous and labour intensive evening dresses and also evoke memories of bedazzling gone wrong. This season it was nice to see the designers give sequins back a more contemporary edge by pushing their size, shape and use of colour to the extreme.

The trimming has been given a sense of irony by Prada and Louis Vuitton where sequin inspired materials were pushed to a larger size and appeared like giant scales or rectangles, sometimes even mimicking the texture of fur.

At Christopher Kane they were given a mermaid-like quality through the varying use of size and subtle changes in colour, which gradated from opal tones through to greens, blue and yellows towards the hems of his sheer dresses.

At Rodarte they were used with subtlety as an underlayer of a skirt but were also used in a more traditional way to remind us of Dorothy’s ruby slippers. And at Comme des Garçons tiny gold sequin discs were plastered all over the hair of the models as a hint of the golden finale which ended the show.

Prada, AW11.

Christopher Kane, AW11.

Louis Vuitton, AW11.

Rodarte, AW11.

Comme des Garçons, AW11.

Catwalk images from Vogue.co.uk».

Half the fun of looking at a Comme des Garçons collection is in looking at the way Rei Kawakubo turns normal sewing rules upside down. Don’t expect to see seams in usual places, easily discernible boundaries between garments or overly laboured couture techniques - it’s all about the concept and finding beauty in the imperfections.

Overlocking is generally used as a technique for finishing the edge of fabric so that it does not fray, but in many Comme des Garçons collections Kawakubo has used overlocking to finish visible outside seams, often in a rough manner and with a mismatched thread.  Overlocking is a mass manufacturing technique which is quick and efficient and generally kept hidden from the eye of the consumer in most high-end ready-to-wear collections. The machines are sometimes also referred to as ‘sergers’ which also cut the fabric as they sew, although many machines which cut the fabric are simply referred to as overlockers whether they cut the fabric or not.

The general principle is that by looping the thread around the edge of the freshly cut fabric the multiple threads are able to secure the weave of the fibres at the edge of the fabric, preventing sections from separating out and causing fraying. Often overlocking is used on sections of garments which will later be hidden by lining, or where visible, will sometimes be replaced with a more elegant finish such as a french seam or bias binding. A similar stitch is also sometimes used on sportswear seams but sometimes in this instance it may be a variation known as flatlocking.

An example of typical overlock stitch formations can be found below so that you know what to look out for on the garments.

Comme des Garçons, AW11.

Catwalk images from Vogue.co.uk. Overlocking images by TheCuttingClass.