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marc jacobs: she wore a chinese ribbon Fashion Wire Daily - Godfrey Deeny
Sep 10, 2008
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John Ford, for whom, ironically, character and not attire mattered most in the creation of his canon, would have loved the latest collection from Marc Jacobs, an eccentrically Victorian romp, a wacky yet wonderful vision that recalled a Sunday afternoon walk to service in a prairie town, albeit one where the churchgoers boasted tailors with a sophisticated understanding of Chinese embroidery and enough money to pay for large quantities of passementerie... But the key look in the show was a series of padded Chinoiserie wrap coats in erratic pattern prints, which enveloped his casting of the 53 of world's best models. “Cracked, fragmented, broken,” was Jacobs own description of the coats, and one that well described the bizarre pendants in Perspex, copper, fur and wire that looped around many necks. Jacobs' penchant for the absurd was evident from the opening look, which like many passages was topped by a squashed straw hat, the sort a dysfunctional aunt would throw on absent mindedly as she exited home. Marc's other bizarre gifts were the strange yet strikingly beautiful truncated tail coats in Lurex hues that came with Napoleonic lapels in mustard, or the glittering jacquard pants paired with Western shirts, which does not sound like they should work, but did. The show was staged on an agreeably quirky “Lady From Shanghai” plain wooden runway divided down the middle by huge freestanding mirrors, heightening the visual schizophrenia of the collection, which rifled through a dozen different influences from Perry Ellis to Yves Saint Laurent, from prairie schoolmarm to penniless Grey Gardens heiress. A dashing dowager obsessed with passementerie, using it on earrings, headbands and jacket trims and, knitting so much crochet on her lonely nights, she covered her high heel shoes with the material.
Plus, from a commercial point of view, Marc Jacobs is a canny dude. One could easily imagine a big-penciled retailer taking all this collection of great separates and completely re-styling it on the departments store floor or window. And, as the show built to the finale, Jacobs faintly wacky aunts morphed into a elegantly sexy nieces with a series of black and green drop dead gorgeous cocktails, great first date looks that finished with three splendidly cut powder pink columns as one's young relative became a goddess. And the movie, which had opened with scenes reminiscent of Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, ended with the cine noir glam of Orson Welles.
courtesy of Fashion Wire Daily
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