Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Required Reading: Books That Inspired the Fall Collections
Spring break is nearly here—do you need a good book for the beach? It’s possible to build a reading list off of the just-wrapped Fall runways; many designers were in a literary state of mind, and we’re not talking about slogans. At a postshow press conference, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele made reference to the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway’s 1984 post-humanist text, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” though, truth be told, it was his more populist reference to Frankenstein that has stuck, resonating as it does with the show’s operating-room set and the head-as-accessory props. At Ann Demeulemeester, Sébastien Meunier also nodded to the pioneering Goth Mary Shelley, who dreamed up that square-headed “creature” 200 years ago in 1818. A more contemporary feminist sparked the imagination of Rei Kawakubo; her ebullient and layered Comme des Garçons collection was informed by Susan Sontag’s pioneering 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ”
NSFW—or the beach—was Christopher Kane’s book of the season: The Joy of Sex, from which he borrowed illustrations by Chris Foss, as well as a typeface. In contrast, William Finnegan’s surf memoir, Barbarian Days, which inspired the sporty but sophisticated looks at Atlein, seems destined to get sand between its pages. It’s no wonder that Tom Wolfe’s bestselling 1987 satire, The Bonfire of the Vanities, would be name-checked (at Krizia); it was a season of ruffles, brights, and outsized proportions largely inspired by the OTT Greed Decade. Never one to follow trends, for her Miu Miu show, Miuccia Prada sent cat-eyed and bouffant-haired models down the runway straight out of the Karlheinz Weinberger fashion bible, Swiss Rebels.
Reissued for Fall by John Galliano designer Bill Gaytten, but available in no bookstores, is the Galliano Gazette, dated April 14, 1994. This newsprint print, which paid tribute to the one created by Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s, gave birth to the Christian Dior Daily (Galliano was designing both lines at the time), and, more recently, to similar motifs at Balenciaga and Helmut Lang. “Heels were up favorably against the Dowdy Jones,” reported the Gazette, where the news was obviously fabulously fake.
