Shocking fashion

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

August 19 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Gabrielle Chanel. This woman turned the fashion world of her time and left us a rich legacy.

The inventions of Gabrielle, known all over the world under the funny nickname Coco, did not consist in inventing new styles - she completely changed the fashionable aesthetics, offering women, instead of huge hats, tight corsets and complex dresses, light, elegant and laconic clothes. This is now the name of Chanel - a synonym for classic taste, and then, at the beginning of the last century, everything that Coco promoted - ladies' trousers and short haircuts, tight-fitting knitwear and "non-aristocratic" tan - became a real challenge to public opinion and was called - Shocking fashion.

Today in the fashion world there are no figures equal to Chanel. But she certainly has followers. Revolutionaries with new avant-garde ideas that cause surprise, bewilderment and even shock. They are destined to shape the fashion of the 21st century.

Another reality of Victor and Rolf

Dutch Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoren, who created the brand Viktor & Rolflove to turn everything upside down. Contrary to established traditions, they exhibited their first collections in museums, then they began to make haute couture, and only then - ready-made clothes. In their Milan boutique, they also turned everything upside down, swapping the floor and ceiling. And sometimes they "flip" dresses, and this is not their strangest idea.

So, in the 2005 collection, the main additions were … pillows that gave the models a surreal look. Two years later, witty designers once again forced the entire fashion community to gasp: in addition to dresses, the models carried complex metal structures on which the dress floors were crucified like butterfly wings.

In the mid-1990s, the grotesque images and hypertrophied ideas of the young design duo became the “beginning of the end” of the then fashionable minimalism. In the new century, Victor and Rolf are still one step ahead. The main thing, when examining their creations on the catwalk, is not to forget to mentally discard all the entourage necessary for the defile: underneath it reveals original and quite “wearable” things.

Hussein Chalayan's future technologies

This Cypriot-born Briton got everyone talking about himself after showing off his graduation collection. He then demonstrated "buried dresses": neatly sewn silk dresses were buried in the ground for a while, and then pulled back - reddened and badly deformed.

Since Hussein Chalayan called "fashion alchemist." He is bored of creating “just things”; it is much more interesting to design a table that turns into a skirt (or vice versa?), unfolding in the manner of a folding glass. Even more surprising is the technology in last year's spring-summer collection. Before the eyes of the public, the outfits "came to life": the skirts were shortened, the brim of the hats decreased, the hem of the dresses opened like flower buds. The final chord was the dress, "crawling" into the hat and leaving the model naked.

In addition to futuristic designs, Chalayan also has quite normal clothes. Moreover, both of these directions can successfully coexist in the same collection. The fashion designer seems to make it clear: the future is near.

The destructive methods of Martin Margela

Belgian designer Mason Martin Margiela hides from the public and the press in every possible way. He does not bow after the defile, his photographs do not leak onto the Internet, and he does not even communicate with journalists by phone. A well-crafted legend further fuels interest in Margela's mysterious personality.

The main trump card of a designer is the ability to create clothes, acting against any rules. Margela was one of the first to think of creating new things from old ones, taking them apart and assembling them as he pleases. "Classic" examples of his work are a sweater made from army socks and a jacket "sculpted" from gloves.

This season, the designer presented a line of sunglasses called "Incognito". These strange, in the form of a black blindfold, glasses fully reflect the principles of Martin Margiela: on the one hand, the denial of one's self, on the other, the desire to attract attention.

Phantasmagorias by Gareth Pugh

Englishman Gareth Pugh - the youngest of the "revolutionaries", and, perhaps, his creations are the most provocative. Many believe that he does not make clothes "for life" at all, and his creations, according to Vogue, are only suitable "for eccentric walks in London at night and going to Nick Knight's masquerade ball."

Perhaps. Pugh often comes up with something incredible from synthetic hair, foil and plastic, using only two colors - black and white. The "otherworldly" images he created evoke either Lewis Carroll's fairy tales or Tim Burton's fantasies. “But I don’t urge you to go to the supermarket!” - the designer laughs.

Gareth Pugh offers ideas that are then transformed into trends. Despite the excessive theatricality, the new, autumn-winter collection of the designer perfectly illustrates the dramatic mood of the season and the fashionable "architecture" of the structures. And then, who knows: maybe these are everyday clothes … Only they will be worn in a hundred years …