The first post since the revival and renewal of the blog. The pressure of writing a good post is definitely there but what better way to start off a fresh new page with one of my favourite shows of New York. Looking at all the past shows that happened two weeks ago, I felt that New York Fashion Week was kind of a bummer. The Holy Trinity of New York- Alexander Wang was good for only the first part of the show when he did the deconstructed suits, Proenza Schouler didn't quite match up with the energy they did for Spring, and Rodarte wasn't exactly love at first sight. It took me quite some time of re-watching the videos, looking at the details up close and understanding the concept behind the show to actually appreciate this Rodarte collection.
This Rodarte show was very different from any of what the Mulleavy sisters have done before. It was neither a repeat nor a continuation of anything they have done in the past. Though the silhouettes and shapes uses were very signature Rodarte, the show had a really different feel to any of their previous shows.
The Mulleavy sisters had mentioned that the concept behind this show was the idea of sleepwalking. Well not exactly sleepwalking as I would like to put it, but rather a sweet romantic little dream, as opposed to the slightly darker idea of a troubled border town and murders.
This show definitely felt more complex than any of their other shows. The mixing of the floral prints with floral prints, the "unsightly" use of gingham and the bulky knits. They weren't exactly perfect, there were flaws, but that was what the entire collection was all about. The idea of the subconscious mind of sleepwalking: nothing is ever taken straight out of the mind and translated to perfect dresses. It was all pieced memory by memory into a dress, where inevitably one part of a memory got mixed up with another. The collection was never meant to be polish, it was of a half dream state, a half reality state.
But as with how the collection got even better to the end, I started to appreciate and understand this collection even more. This is a flawed presentation, it was meant to be and it should be. I tried imagining the collection being "normal", the floral prints mixed in with the same floral prints, the pants being tailored, but it just wasn't right. The Mulleavy sisters had built a collection of sleep-walking and not a perfect little day-dream. The beauty lied in the imperfections, not in the perfections, but the perfection of imperfections was certainly seen and felt. And that, I felt that the whole collection was very honest and sincere.
The long ethereal dresses at the end, I felt were just pure magical and pristine. But as to the whole collection, the floral prints did not just evoke sweet romantic floral scents but a certain hint of cold and darkness, the white dresses were supposed to be simple and something like a 'sorbet after a three-course meal" as compared to the mash-ups of fabric in the first half, but there was this slight feeling of the wearer of the dress being a little eclectic, a little lonely, a little distant, a little of an enigma, a little Boo Radley, a little of a Lolita who lives in a tree, a little of the Lisbon sister (very Cecilia, I thought). They weren't just simple white chiffon and lace dresses. In between those layers of white, there were slight streaks of black and grey.
The end was just a dream. As the dark lights fell during the finale, the models' shoes which were molded into melted candlewax, lit up. The clothes glowed (Oh yes they did!). The light may have been replaced with darkness, the flame extinguished, but the glowing candlewax revealed that the end hasn't yet come. It could be a reflection of the slight glimmer of hope in the darkness that many of the workers of the troubled border town of Mexico, which Kate and Laura had taken inspiration from, still had, even when it seemed impossible. Or they simply could be just the work of geniuses, Nicolas Kirkwood and Kate and Laura Mulleavy.
The collection was blurry, messy, imperfect-words that you would never used to describe something you liked. But this was it and it was a wonderful vision.
As candles melt, the wax gets left behind. And this wax continues to provide energy for the next flame and it goes on and on. The same goes with this blog of mine.
