Pop and Pastiche: Comme des Garcons and Galliano

COMME DES GARCONS, JOHN GALLIANO

 

Comme des Garcons
One skull can be ominous, but tens of thousands of skullsâ??a whole collection of skulls, skulls on shoes, painted on the back of heads, in large shadow prints on shirt yokes, printed one atop another on T-shirts, in upholstery jacquard jackets, mixed with checks on pants or looking flouncing around on party dresses for menâ??borders on hysterical. Rei Kawakubo has taken the skull (now an almost ubiquitous motif in today’s wannabe-bad-boy world), and transformed it into a triumphant, graphic wall. And underneath the skull attack is her signature sharp, minimal tieless tailoring. And those party dresses? For boys with the right legs I’m thinking: why not!
 

John Galliano
As with last season, John Galliano showed in a gutted bank off Paris’s chic Place Vendôme. He’s a designer who loves storytelling, dreaming up characters and scenarios and designing the clothes to tell the tale.  After Fall 2010’s Sherlock Holmes theme, Galliano moved on to silent film comics Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keatonâ??with painted-on abs and codpieces, no less. Those dusty little tramp suits Chaplin wore (Galliano showed them with sarouel-cut pants to mimic Charlie’s shuffling walk) and Keaton’s neat-as-a-pin 20s tailoring, squished around the abdomen, couldn’t be more contemporary.