From the chiasmus archive: "Fear of God. Spring 2021" Posted on August 15, 2021

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(Images: Fear of God. 2020)

There is most certainly an 1980's cool that owes itself to the end of the 1970's and the hedonism that spilled over into the early 80’s, ala the Studio 54 celebrity excesses that for the most part almost four decades old, a lot the individuals that participated in that snapshot of time have passed on, yet the resonation or ghosts linger.   Designers, particularity in the fashion world who have been drawing from the 1970's and 1980's almost every season for the last decade, it is this obsession, which I don’t mind as far as being an inspiring aesthetic cue, needs to be balanced otherwise, in esoteric Buddhist lore, you are disturbing the ghosts and maybe as a metaphor it is why our present time is so troubled.   Still, Jerry Lorenzo of his brand Fear of God which he founded in 2013 has absorbed the said time-lines, by paying homage to the epitome of male coolness and sex appeal of the 1980's, that being the actor Richard Gere.   And with Gere’s breakthrough movie, the 1980 “American Gigolo” directed by Paul Schrader, also co-starring the beautiful Lauren Hutton.  If you want to see why these two worked so well together, search for a picture floating around in cyberspace showing a coy looking Sutton eying an effortlessly stylish Gere as he leads her through a swathe of paparazzi onto the 1980 premier of  American Gigolo in New York City.   Oh my!  If a picture is worth a thousand words, it would be summed up in one sentence: The chemistry between those two!

A revamp of the 1980s preppy look for a 21st Century  is very hard to pull off, particularly at that time of the 1980s, the homogeneity of yuppie-esqe styles was not a runway favorite.   Excess was, and it came in the form of avant-garde and opulence at the birth of the supermodel, yet  Lorenzo has offered the sleeker, modernist cues of 1970s post-punk to invigorate the collection.   Despite the name of the brand, the array presented for Men’s Pre-Fall 2021 (released at the tail end of 2020) showing is not as edgy as it could have been in reflection of the contemporary issues of our time. As we, collectively are still amidst a global pandemic of a deadly respiratory virus that is mutating at a rapid rate, due partly to the asymmetrical handing of the vaccine roll-out, with the wealthiest Nations going all out to inoculate their populous by hoarding vaccines for the 1st strain, so that the Northern Hemisphere Spring Summer openings could open up with gusto, while half the world remains in lockdowns and quarantines.   But, if one can take some aesthetic guidance from the 1980s, it would be its overall sentiment that it offered, in a societal template, to be an honest and in some ways clearer representation of historic differentials. Rather than a feigned digital landscape of globalised networks.

Yet,  Lorenzo’s Fear of God pre-fall collection makes the point of defining its, as mentioned, sleek array, which, even though it maybe a simulacrum of past looks and styles, it is never-the-less beautifully tailored and portrayed with Lorenzo offering  that his Pe-Fall ensemble is indeed inspired by 1980s pop culture.   However,  Lorenzo’s latest collection, could have worked in a more of avant-garde approach to the tailored delineation looks presented, fusing a darker template within its romanticism.  As it was an era that lived under three decades of the threat of nuclear annihilation and in the mid 80’s, a horrible autoimmune disease appeared.  

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(A.Glass 2021)