British Style Genius
Ended up coming home at a reasonable hour last night and had time to watch “British Style Genius” on BBC2.
Such a great initiative, it basically mapped out the life and career of first Vivienne Westwood (and to some extent Malcolm McLaren too) and spoke of how she has paved the way for British fashion. I did my Sixth form last year project on “Women’s Liberation Through Fashion” and there is not way to avoid mentioning Westwood. She is one of the old school, non-design educated but self-taught creators who really have made a mark in style history. That rebel/punk spirit is still alive today in her collections and it really makes the clothes feel alive.
Two other designers mentioned were John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. Galliano’s famous breakthrough St Martin’s collection,“Les Incroyables” was packed with some amazing fabrics but foremost his tailoring was formidable. Like it was said in the show, perhaps the pieces were too extreme even for the mostess fashion maven but worn apart with something dressed down they perhaps could even be more appreciated. Gallianio famously went on to design for Givenchy and then of course, the house of Dior. What really struck me was the passion Galliano had for his designs. In the 90’s when bankruptcy wasn’t uncommon him and Amanda Harlech (his then muse with a very interesting history of her own) would drive the collections themselves to save money and make the business move. Eventually, Anna Wintour herself helped him with valuable connections that would be able to fund his business.
Alexander McQueen is another St Martin’s student whose graduate collection was bought by the late Isabella Blow. He designed for Givenchy from 1996-2001 and sold 51% of his company to the Gucci Group in 2000. He has won the award of “British Designer of the Year” four times between 1996-2003.
As always, I find that there is so much to be inspired from when it comes to people like this. Such a creative and unconventional vision is hard to come by and truly the essence of why fashion is not just that top for £10 you get in TopShop or New Look but actually a cultural phenomenon which starts at the creative top and filters its way down to the highstreet shops.
Like Miranda Priestly said in “The Devil Wears Prada”:“This… ‘stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff”
Enough said.
