Christopher Kane. Pre-Fall 2023
Christopher Kane for his latest collection stays in tune with his intricacy of defining the sexual elements of the feminine. And can be said that aesthetics can either enhance or restrict freedom of expression, as noted with his Spring 2023 collection, the bondage, latex and medical fetish arrays have been maintained with his Pre-Fall collection.
The hedonism of late 1970's has been played out numerous times by various fashion designers, in its romanticism of an era that truly did live by the Friday night disco and the subsequent one night stand. And it was achieved under the real shadow of nuclear annihilation and a society that was also impacted with an energy crisis that lasted until the early 1980's. The counter culture of the 1960's of revolution and change was replaced by living on that edge of a tomorrow that may never transpire. It took over a decade later, going into the 1990's when the generation that came up after that tumultuous period, began to embrace the digital age, which in turn imprinted wayward ambitions of grandeur. As seemingly the Cold War had ended. And it was the hope that technology in a globalised world could set us free, and we'd all become entrepreneurs.
Yet, the other sweet spot of hedonistic overture was the 80's, as a new counter culture began in earnest that being 'punk' as a necessary backlash of the hangover that was 60's hippies and the emergence of disco. And it was these aesthetics of punk, in its modernist twist and rebellion against, ironically modernism, that so much has to be owed to the recently passed away dame of punk Vivienne Westwood. Who showed how to develop the mix and match of stylizations, that incorporated bondage, latex and straps onto formal wear; to be the quintessential visual protest against both the hippie styles and a new found work ethic i.e the conservative looking 80's yuppie.
And it appears that Kane has moved into that said period with his 2023 Pre-Fall collection reflecting his futurist take on the 1980's, ala its charm of dystopian science fiction of forty years ago and its interpretation of the coming decades ahead. And they may have gotten that right. As the old and new evolve out of a broken city, becoming infused into its retrofitted neon ambiance. Our current society ain't no utopia.
There is less of a sexual imprint with his latest collection, although the sentiment is there, the lookbook styles are more akin to the 1982 cult movie Blade Runner. So, why not enjoy a cocktail in that future city that is of the now, in the bar at the end of the world.
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(A.Glass 2023)
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