Advent 2014 starts, specially for Design & Culture by Ed! Up till Christmas, our favourite 2014 fashion moments are going to be highlighted on the ALAÏA BEIGE… for the 1st of December, we chose Comme des Garcons SS15 by Rei Kawakubo for the strongly anti-political collection & magical hair by Julien d’Ys. “Maybe it’s not hard to live between the world of kids and world of adults? Maybe we shouldn’t initially think of red as blood, but more of love? Rei Kawakubo, the poet of fashion, asks us again a strong question”. – from the review of the collection, published earlier this year.
Red
Red Queen. Comme des Garcons SS15
“Why brilliant fashion designers, a notoriously nonanalytic breed, sometimes succeed in anticipating the shape of things to come better than professional predictors, remains one of the most obscure questions in history and, for the historian of culture, one of the most central.” said Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm. This sentence perfectly introduces you to Rei Kawakubo’s extraordinary summer, full of blood and roses. Very theatrical it was the SS15 for Comme des Garcons was very politically-historically connected. We switch from 2014 to 1914. Pain, wars, love, favourism, feeling, power- all of these things left a clew in those massive pieces. There was not even a major variation in reds; it was the same rose red, or poppy red, expressed again and again in widely different textures and silhouettes that ran like exploded and tattered versions of an invented history, one of Kawakubo’s own making. It was all RED. And very dramatic and deep. The hair reminded me of Alice in The Wonderland‘s big-headed queen while the exaggerated hoodies felt like The Red Riding Hood. Maybe it’s not hard to live between the world of kids and world of adults? Maybe we shouldn’t initially think of red as blood, but more of love? Rei Kawakubo, the poet of fashion, asks us again a strong question.
HC: Red. Viktor & Rolf AW14
Viktor & Rolf thought of something so clear for today’s celebrities- red carpets. For their third haute couture show, they changed the whole runway into an endless red carpet. And, amazingly, the clothes were also red… and were made out of carpets, mostly. If you are interested how to knot your red, bathroom rug around your body, here is your perfect guide. Should I write more?
#TBT: McQueen’s 1998 Joan D’Arc Show
The Alexander McQueen show for AW 1998 was all about the influence of Joan D’Arc. The collection was very sexy, strong and controversial- surely the eerie bald heads of models and the sinister red eyes made the atmosphere incredibly gloomy and mysterious… Full of bloody red colour, the show ended with a real ring of fire. The moment when one of the models was on fire felt melancholic and disturbing!























