Christopher Kane. Ready-to-Wear Fall 2022 - London Fashion Week
After a year of pandemic hiatus away from the runway, Christopher Kane keeps his look books alive and well within this tumultuous world we live in, as of writing this review of Kane's latest showing, the Russian President Vladimir Putin has just ordered an invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign country, as the spectra of both a new Cold War and an attempt of redefining European borders once more with brute force has returned, akin to Nazi Germany when it invaded Poland in 1939. We may be witnessing something very dark enveloping the world once again. Yet, sexuality, to which Kane has always represented in a matured and intellectual way, runs parallel to destruction as seen in esoteric Buddhism and Hinduism; we are intrinsically attached to sex, life and death. The tension and fear of death, whether externally or internally felt may indeed lead to an urgency of the eros, as noted with psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron's study in 1974 to assay their term of a 'misattribution of arousal'. A famous thought experiment which tests the intrinsic relationship of dread and its last gasp intimacy, which had men crossing a swaying suspension bridge in an effort to reach the other side where an attractive woman was standing. Subsequently, it did indeed inspire men who crossed the bridge, to give the woman waiting their phone numbers, in comparison, of the same experiment on a more stable bridge, the outcome was not as prolific.
And it is Kane's experiment with the aesthetics of sexuality that has always shown a deep respect toward the feminine, more so in its intricacy and detailing which exudes a passionate display. To which his latest offering represents a further step towards mastering the eros without its gaudy and cheap arrays that some luxury brands, when portraying amorous styles, can fall into an overly sexualized trap. Kane has obviously honed his styles over the years, making his Fall 2022 collection a benchmark of the said themes. Yet, his latest looks do reveal a sombre resolve in light of previous seasons. One of the trends that did emerge from 2021 was the avant-garde, more so the gothic inclinations, which was the lesser trend, versus modernist styles prior to the pandemic. However, it has been the darker and experimental layering of deviceful looks that have overtaken the cleaner and modernist styles, which by its directive, if one is to know their art history, modernism evolved from a hope in technology and innovation. A Utopian aesthetic that, since the global pandemic and now a new cold war, has descended more into a decayed concept. We are, without any science fiction narrative, living in a broken down dystopia. So, it is understandable that fashion, as a visual cue, represents structural ebbs and flows of a society caught in a flux of turmoil and peace.
Kane's “Sexual Selection” collection draws from nature’s raw manifestation of sex and reproduction, even though we are culturally and biologically driven, as a human race, we adhere to the same. In which Kane's styles represent, amidst his avant-garde bondage stylizations, a spectrum of colors, while infusing the duality of black and white, showcasing these colorfully pieces on display to reflect that animistic drive to attract a mate. To stand out as the most radiant. But, humans are complex beasts, which I feel Kane has also inscribed into his latest styles. Noted with soft and sensual tulle pieces, mixed with the dark and forebode re-cut dresses that limn sexual excesses. Offering the paradoxical as a tantalizing edge, represented, which many fashion designers have also portrayed, the dominatrix, to be that amorous female icon. However, despite the allure of the risqué, with thigh high dresses, textured materials, with sliver-like cuts revealing a nakedness, Kane's latest collection offers that feminine mystique, defined, beyond its sexual reproduction, as the pleasure seeker to be equal to the masculine or even surpass it.
She may not entirely be bound by nature.
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