Thursday, May 19, 2011

Seeing Snape in Gareth Pugh's Fall 2011

geometric, robust, disciplined tops and triumphantly billowing hems, capes, and trousers, which were indeed inspired by robes. Priest's robes, but no matter.







This looks a great deal like Snape's swirling cape as he spins out of sight in the latest DH2 trailer:



No, I am not implying that Severus would wear any of this. Now that personal obsessions have been dealt with, let's talk about Gareth Pugh. While I didn't think he was ready to fill Alexander McQueen's shoes last year - a possibility rumored at the time - Pugh's collections, though not as brilliant, reflect a certain facet of McQueen's style that we have not seen much of in Sarah Burton's work. The present collection is not Pugh's best sample of McQueen-imbibed stuff, but his earlier work definitely intertwines with McQueen's, theme-wise: the harlequin motif, the black and white outfits, the dark-costume-drama-on-acid dimension, like for instance in McQueen's fall 2008 and fall 2009. Oh, and I'm not implying anything about who influenced who. Nor am I reducing the value of Pugh's design to their degree of resemblance to Lee's work. The dissimilarities are more significant than the similarities anyway, which this collection makes quite clear.








I keep getting the sense that he's been interested in making fabric look like metal. His sleek spring 2011 collection seemed like an effort to make us believe those coats have been forged by an effeminate blacksmith. Here, to the contrary, we see metal hanging down in folds, like fabric.






An enfant terrible whose taste for sensationalism is receding in favor of sophistication. He's progressed a great deal.

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