Monday 3 January 2011

Contemporary fashion 1990 & 2000

I think I may have already mentioned that I'm not the biggest fan of fashion exhibitions. That's why I was a bit sceptical of visiting 'Les Annees 1990&2000, Histoire Ideale de la Mode Contemporaine', however I was pleasantly suprised at how thoroughtly interesting and inspiring I found the exhibition. The 150 garments displayed showed a range of garments so varied and innovative, pushing boundaries as far as use of materials and colour are concerned. Martin Margiela is certainly a key player as far as innovative materials are concerned with his blonde wig jacket, tinsel top, shoelace dress and dress made from those horrid dangly velvet curtains the French seem to love hanging in their doorways. Veronique Branquinho, a designer I had not come across before had made a beautiful knitted corset which stood out as different and playful amongst her other black, sombre garments. Some designers featured, e.g. Junya Watanabe, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto were already familiar to me after having visited the Japanese fashion exhibition at the Barbican. Miyake had a range of heavily pleated garments which reminded me of the core of mushrooms but many other designers, for example Lanvin by Claude Montana concentrate in simple geometric shapes and totally dissregard texture, with some, e.g. Hussein Chalayan even verging on being sculptural.

Galliano's expressions of grandeur, eloquence and excess were clearly displayed in his garments-



Also, probably owing to my current obsession with feathery fishing flies, I was particularly fond of Jean Paul Gautiers' feather bolero-



As well as this dress, made from a pair of denim jeans exploding into a trail of delicate white feathers-



I also liked the garments of Balenciaga by Nicolas Ghesquiere due to their exquisite detail with layers of lace, tuille etc. Some garments looked as though they had been heavily beaded however on closer inspection it transpired they were made of bits of dyed fabric tightly scrunched together.

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