The models in the Calvin Klein show on Thursday, Sept. 11, did not so much walk down the catwalk as waft; their clothes as light and insubstantial as a heat haze, their fabrics creased and folded like rumpled bed sheets...
Curiously contradictory, since the jackets were boxy, coats came with round oversized shoulders and deep pockets and everything was finished with a thousand creases, yet the ensemble seemed light and airy. In a word, this spring 2009 collection looked as much an exhibition of modernist sculpture as a collection of clobber.
Without doubt, the collection was probably the most contemporary we saw in the New York season, one characterized primarily with a return to an Eighties power silhouette and a fixation with cramming collections full of separates, the better to give retailers options in a gloomy economy, where customers maybe can be tempted to refresh their wardrobes, not reinvent them.
One could never fault Calvin Klein's designer Francisco Costa of lacking ambition; since this collection was far more a statement of where fashion should be going than an assortment of clothes aimed at a specific customer.
Though light and spacious throughout, many of the materials were stiff – technical nylon twill, brushed latex or cooper plated metal wire, used, no less, in a shirt - while closures and belts were mega hard – Lucite, plated nickel or even steel mesh, used as heels on some sensational court shoes.
The choice of materials would be irrelevant if this collection by Calvin Klein – shown without the presence of the founder, who also skipped the house's 40th anniversary party on Sunday Sept. 7 – did not please the eye. Which it did, creating a series of strikingly beautiful images and silhouettes that confirmed Costa as a designer in synch with the house's DNA, yet not intimidated by it.
The show itself was as slickly staged as one would expect from Calvin Klein, the week's coolest soundtrack by DJ Michel Gaubert, a gurgling mix of synth' and bass that brilliantly lightened the mood, and a fresh-faced casting that was suitably minimal.
The program notes quoted UK art curator Neville Wakefield: "Compressed times and expanded geometries… Flat-pack elegance and minimal prisms… Cubic formalisms and future memories… Dimensions folded like clothes…" And there was a feeling throughout of a space age regiment of decision-making women whose lives are rarely soiled by chores, never sullied by sweat. And that was, ultimately, what set Klein apart from most other collections during this Manhattan season.
photos courtesy of Fashion Wire Daily
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