20 March 2012

it makes you think.

Fashion, at it's best, transforms and inspires us and it's more than thread and fabric and seams. It is an idea that you can wear that you can shape or be shaped by. That's why I love it. I might not ever be able to afford the things that are very high fashion, or at least, very rarely -- but it lets me dream and that isn't something you can buy. I actually paid attention to shows last season (or at least, London shows, I was a TERRIBLE reporter on the NY shows and need to beg forgiveness to my editors for that.... please love me bossman I love you!!!) and I'm glad I did, because it confirmed my love for designers I have been watching for the past few seasons. The main one being J.W. Anderson.

                         

This is from his last collection, but I'm a big fan of his past few seasons, too. I like how sparse and naked they feel. He takes sex out of the equation, like all my other favorite designers. It's one of my favorite things to think about, the relationship of sex to fashion. Most of the time I don't want my clothes to say anything about sex, I don't want to be an object. If they do make a statement about sexuality, I want it to be a subversive one, I want to creep people out, I want to make people as uncomfortable as their leers make me. I want protection and thorns. The idea of a collection designed 'for women' but leaves the idea of what a woman really is -- that is so interesting to me. It is ambiguous and questionable and for that, it's remarkable. Clothes say a lot about a person if you want them to, and these are like opting for silence. It's rebellion.

                         

Learning more about this collection made me love it even more, too. Apparently it's called "The Chamber of Isolation" -- JWA "imagined a woman so oppressed by that domesticity that she'd flipped her wig." It's rad, isn't it? You can tell. She's saying enough is enough. I don't want to be fucking cute. I want to be free. Fuck your noise.

It's rad when you can see your politics in the clothes you love. I could wax on about Rei's last collection, too, but I mean... we all know how much I love her.