It may seem in my recent posts that I am fashion
obsessed, fashion fanatic, fashion whore, what have you. Truth be told I am
not. There are several parts to me recent strange behavior. Part one: as I
mentioned before I’m going through some shit and refraining from substance
abuse has caused me to credit card abuse. Part two, like all living creatures,
man woman, cat, and dog, alike, I get caught up in shiny pretty things. Part
three: I’m a Libra; I have a deep-rooted passion for beautiful things and find harmony
when surrounded by beautiful things. This may make me vain I realize that. In
the past I have surrounded myself with different types of beauty, weather it be
art, music, dance, people, I always had some sort of beauty that I cling on to.
Now this is not a rant about any of that, rather, the fact is that I was laying
awake at night unable to sleep and thinking about my newfound love for luxury
fashion. In particular I was thinking about Chanel and Alexander McQueen. I
started to analyze why it was that I had a few niche designers that I had the
utmost respect for. It is not because they are some of the highest level of
luxury one can peruse but rather what they stand for. I bet many people don’t
know this but the classic Chanel bag designed by Madam Coco herself was not to
simply have a pretty thing for women to put their things in, but rather the
first bag to provide a shoulder strap thus giving women the freedom to use both
hands whereas before women used clutches limiting their range of movement. And that
to me is in a nutshell what Chanel is about. Moving forward, creating
statements through fashion in order to have an impact on social behavior.
Perhaps not in a Nobel Prize winning sort of way, but important non the less.
The house of Chanel creates pieces that are not only beautiful but contain very
important elements as well. While maintaining the feminine mystique,
'femininity', and sexuality, there are the elements of androgyny, perhaps a bit
of toughness, and a sexual appeal that needs to be able to suite the modern day
woman. The clothing is allowing for the line to be blurred between feminine and
masculine, while maintaining its provocative nature. Madame Coco wanted women
to be allowed to be sexy, and also be practical. Now I’m sure looking at the runway
shows one might think how are any of these clothes practical, well I do not
believe it is the literal form of the clothing but rather the idea of the
clothing that accomplish this. For me the philosophy speaks louder than the
actual piece of fabric. For example, in the latest spring 2012 collection many
references were made to the ocean, the slicked back hair with pearls, the fresh
face 'out of the water' makeup, and the color schemes. The ocean is a very
powerful reference, it is where life started, and the womb of life on earth one
might even say, hence a symbol of femininity. The line itself of course had a
few fun dresses and skimpy bikinis but must of the cuts were the trade mark
boxy cut of Chanel, the classic Chanel jacket and dress pant, the tightly
slicked back hair, all things that one might think to find in a men’s wear
collection. However Chanel pairs this with elegance, beauty, femininity, and to
my delight, a lack of fragility. These styling’s are not of delicate little sea
creatures but of 'I am woman hear me roar', politely, that is. Chanel marries
the two wonderfully, creating, almost even elbowing, a space for the female to
maintain her sexual allure while also giving off an air of strength, not the
damsel in distress, or 'girl in picnic outfit looking for single male, must
like cats". And it is in this sense that I would argue that Chanel is
indeed very pragmatic and one of the leaders in our world of change.
Now McQueen of the other hand, is almost the opposite in terms if
philosophy. Let me make a comparison, if Chanel is the da Vinci of fashion,
McQueen is the Picasso, or even the Dali. McQueen’s line is not necessarily
about a social stance, but rather an aesthetic undertaking. The pieces
themselves are statements of aesthetics. They are not pretty; no they are
shocking, disturbingly beautiful. They are like thought bubbles on the
philosophy of aesthetics come to life. With out ugly there is no beauty, with
out chaos we would not know order, and these are the works of McQueen. One
might look at the headpieces and say, but you have put a woman’s head in a
cage, what is that supposed to mean? That I fear would be a very narrow minded
attempt to analyze the mind of this genius. These lines of clothing dose not
exist in our world, but refer to a different time space capsule. Like Dali’s
paintings the clothing are somewhere between a nightmare and wonderful fantasy,
something one is tempted to delve into, but would have (literally) no idea how
to get out of. These clothes do not exist for the change of here and now but
for some other realm, perhaps the future, perhaps the past, perhaps something
that has no end or beginning and simply is. I am not trying to claim that these
are futuristic pieces that one would wear in the year 5670, though one could
interpret it that way, which is not my approach. I believe that the clothes
exist in a different magnitude then of what one just puts on their body, they
are a range of philosophies that man has been battling with since the beginning
of time.
Both designers are timeless in different ways, Chanel because it will
always be at the forefront of fashion breaking old rules in order to create new
ones and then breaking those in a never ending cycle, McQueen because the work
is referencing something very raw and instinctual, ideas that have been
troubling philosophers, artists, and all people alike since humanity, the
question of what is beauty. His work is thought provoking, and questioning;
once one answer is reveled another pops up. It is timeless.
