Dressing for the Apocalypse

Glasgow is currently experiencing one of those Grey Christmasses that are so often inexplicably ignored by song and story. Grey because the sun only rises for about two hours per day; grey because of the unrelenting sleet. Today, a trip to the shops was not unlike one of those Lord Of The Rings scenes where Frodo and Sam are trudging up Mount Doom. Or The Road:

As a further illustration of how much of a Feral Sweater Person one becomes in this climate, this is what I was wearing to go out on said shopping trip:

Caveat: I haven't actually seen The Road. However, I know what it looks like, and was reminded of this when I met up with my friend J the other day. I should mention at this point that J has been living in a forest for the last six months, although in the interests of fairness I should also mention that he kind of dresses like this anyway. It's awesome:

Yes, those are thermal longjohns underneath a pair of rolled-up jeans. And the tarpaulin-like oilskin jacket is belted shut with an Army Surplus belt that he'd found in a changing room. This is tip-top apocalypse dressing, people. He could easily be hanging out with Viggo & co. at a moment's notice:

So, I have a lot of thoughts about apocalypse dressing. There are so many dystopic/post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows that there are a myriad of different costuming directions for one to take. At one extreme we have The Road, very realistic in the sense that their clothes are picked purely for practicality and are a complete mess. At the other end we have movies like Mad Max, Tank Girl and Escape From New York in which everyone has suddenly developed an obsession with fetishwear. 

Black leather and rubber: perfect materials for the desert. Young man, where is your sunhat?

Thanks, 1980s-90s DYI street-style aesthetic! You have influenced the apocalypse-movie genre to such an extent that Burning Man is rife with ripoffs of it to this day.

The one thing that all post-apocalypse movies can agree on is that boots are important. Big boots. Shit-kickers, in fact. Boots that are suitable either for grim hikes across the bleak landscape of humanity's collapse, or for when the evil empress of the post-zombie sex club/motorcycle gang/escaped prisoner enclave kidnaps our dear hero and ties them to something while dancing around in leather and fake fur. Somewhere in the middle of this sliding scale we have the "artfully-distressed" look of films like Waterworld, where we are supposed to believe that the action takes place so far in the future that all stocks of supermarket-brand clothing have been used up and humanity is reduced to wearing beige off-cuts of stuff tied together with seaweed.

Some slightly higher-class"everything is tied together with string because it's the end of the world"-inspired styling from Gareth Pugh. Note the apoca-boots! Accompanying expression of dismal hopelessness: essential.

For some reason, nobody in Waterworld-esque movies ever bothers teaching themselves to weave. Which is odd, because the two types of people who are likely to survive an apocalypse are people with lots of practical skills and a willingness to adapt to trying circumstances (ie, the type of people who would teach themselves to fucking weave), and people who are utterly ruthless (ie, the type of people who would threaten someone else until they taught themselves to fucking weave). But does apocalyptic fiction need realism in order to succeed? No. No, it does not. In fact, the best dystopic/end-of-civilisation film I've ever seen -- Children Of Men -- relies upon a premise that is not only never properly explained, but is probably impossible in real life.

As I previously mentioned in my Fan's Introduction To Costume Design, sometimes accuracy is overrated.

The old favourite "bits of stuff tied to other stuff" aesthetic, so favoured by steampunks.

The other thing both types of post-apocalyptic film can agree on is that everything should be dirty and/or torn -- the difference being that for serious movies, things are torn where they'd be likely to tear in real life, whereas in things like Tank Girl you can be absolutely sure that the ripping will occur over the cleavage, Captain Kirk-style. Either that, or entire sleeves or trouser-legs will go missing. When you think about it, the dystopic future/apocalypse genre is a surprisingly egalitarian one when it comes to gendered costuming. In most media, "ridiculous, flesh-baring outfit that nobody in real life would dream of wearing" is restricted to the ladies, but the noble traditions of unfeasible movie dystopias dictate that everyone can, and should, dress like this. Case in point, Escape From New York:

Leather vest? Knee boots? Skin-tight non-camouflaging camouflage trousers? Tell me that isn't unisex. Not to mention Isaac Hayes:

In a way, Isaac Hayes' outfits aren't too unreasonable. What deranged dictator of an isolated and insular society doesn't love snazzy epaulettes? It's practically a requirement. Although Sol Kane's "biohazard tattoo + mohawk + horde of kilt-wearing Scottish cannibal punks" ensemble from Doomsday (one of the best movies ever, as you'll learn if you read its Hello, Tailor review) holds a special place in my heart, I do admit.

The Matrix runs the full gamut of silly post-apocalyptic fashions to best effect. In the real world, everyone is living in relative squalor, the population is tiny and constantly beset by difficulty, and everyone wears raggedly recycled (presumably) knitted jumpers while eating gruel and talking about the revolution. That's the "realistic" side, providing you don't think too hard about, well, anything. 

from here.

Then in the real world everyone gets to wear their preposterous goths-of-1999 cyber gear, all of which is inconceivably shiny, not to mention uncomfortable and a hindrance to any martial arts they might be required to do. But at least they have the excuse that they can wear literally anything they care to dream up, unlike the multitudes of other movie characters who mysteriously manage to source perfectly-fitted catsuits from... well, it's never entirely clear, much like the origin of Peter Parker's professional-grade Spidey Suit once he's graduated on from the "spider logo stencilled onto a red hoodie" stage.

Stealthy.

As you may have deduced from the title, this is merely Part 1 of a series of apocalypse fashion posts. I realised about two movies in that I'm clearly not going to fit everything in here. Reduce the Mad Max trilogy to a mere one picture? A travesty! I've not even seen the third one yet, and that one has Tina Turner

To finish things off on the note with which they started, I turn to a dreary-looking film, set in Britain, that featured altogether too many sensible jackets and a colour palette evidently inspired by drizzle and mud.

Reign Of Fire. Heard of it? It stars Christian Bale, Matthew McConnaughey and Gerard Butler, and tells the tale of a world overrun by dragons. Dragons that hatched out of the London Underground. In terms of bad-moviehood, this is one of the most wasted premises of the last decade. Here you have three famous Hollywood beefcakes -- at least one-and-a-half of whom are good actors -- and you're making a movie where dragons hatch out of the London Underground and throw the world into chaos. The dragons are such a threat that they more or less destroy civilisation. American Matthew McConnaughey is practically hailed as the messiah when he shows up with guns and a helicopter at the tiny castle settlement (OF COURSE) where Gerard Butler and Christian Bale live. This selection of concepts adds up to what should have been a gloriously preposterous B-movie cult hit, but the filmmakers ruined it by trying to make it too serious. All the actors play it completely straight, as you can probably tell just by looking at these pictures. Everything is so gritty. Guys, gritty is for The Road. Gritty is for Children Of Men. Gritty is for films whose main plotline doesn't hinge upon dragons hatching out of the London Underground.

Reign of Fire's only concession to the ridiculousness it deserved was the fact that Matthew McConnaughey, because he was American, drove a tank while chewing on a cigar. I don't remember exactly, but I hope he lit the cigar off some dragon-fire at some point. If he didn't, then that was truly a wasted opportunity.

I'm not saying that Reign Of Fire is abysmal or anything, but it doesn't maintain the correct level of illogical glee required to make this type of movie truly entertaining. Once you've got dragons, why not just go the whole hog? The protagonists' main enemy breathes fire! That's like a GOLD-PLATED INVITATION FOR EVERYONE TO WEAR LEATHER CATSUITS! The one situation in which it's a good idea to wear something non-flammable (LEATHER CATSUITS), and they let it slide. Tragic. Tragic. Then all you have to do is throw in some dragon-worshipping cultists who all wear red leather catsuits and flame-helmets or something, and you've got yourself a proper post-apocalyptic dragon hunter movie.

Seriously. They should hire me to write this shit.

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Pre-Fall 2012: Max Azria, Missoni, Rachel Zoe, and Erdem.

Hervé Léger by Max Azria

Plain, pretty dresses: something you won't usually find much of on this blog. However, something about this line from Max Azria got to me. For some reason it reminds me of the Hunger Games, and the outfits Katniss was made to wear by her stylists before she went into the arena. Tight and sexy, but sporty and strong at the same time. Look at this model -- she looks ready and able to punch someone, I think:

pics from Style.com

I'm not sure where these strappy harness accessories came from, but they really lift the dresses from the oft-repeated skintight bandage dress aesthetic of Max Azria into something a little punkier and ever-so-slightly sci-fi.

Of course, there's a distinct possibility that I'm just in favour of all these minidresses because earlier today I was on the hunt for Star Trek uniform dresses. You see, my family gives gifts on New Years Day, not Christmas, and so far all I've been able to come up with for my wishlist is tights (which I can buy myself), Transmetropolitan books (except I can't remember which volumes I've already read) and an Uhura-style Original Series Star Trek uniform. The problem with this is that almost all the versions I can find online are either super-accurate cosplay dresses (EXPENSIVE) or "sexy" costumes made from, like, spandex or some shit. Is it so unreasonable to ask for a Star Trek uniform dress that looks enough like a normal red minidress that I can put a scarf over it and no one will know any different? OK, yes, it really is, and I am a terrible and ungrateful person. The eventual solution may just be to make my own.

Boring dress + harness thing = somehow interesting again?

Know what this reminded me of? The Obama HOPE logo. But I guess that comes from a long tradition of propoganda posters using simplified diagonal-stripe images to represent rolling hills of utopic plenty, or sun-rays. Anyway, the end result is a one-shouldered dress that doesn't look like a wrestling costume or a horrifying '80s monstrosity, and that's pretty unusual.

HUNGER GAMES DRESS.

Missoni

Not a big Missoni fan, but this collection was just feral sweater girl enough in places that I could go for it.

Nice dress, but what the hell is going on with that backdrop?

Rachel Zoe

Much as I dislike Rachel Zoe for her multitude of fashion crimes (popularising boho and the frustratingly offensive "hobo chic" trends by way of her stylist work with people like the Olsen twins; encouraging extreme weight-loss lifestyles; styling the stunningly beautiful and awesome Anne Hathaway in such a way that she looks terrible for practically every one of her red-carpet appearances), I really like this outfit. I like to imagine that (once one has removed the irritating Rachel Zoe bug-eye shades) this would be what Luke Skywalker would wear in a gender-swapped Star Wars.

Erdem

An underwhelming Pre-Fall line from Erdem this year, which is sad because Erdem is one of the very few pretty-flowery-dress designers that I actually like. ie, SUMMER GIRLFRIEND outfits:

The one thing I can say in favour of this unusually boring collection is the photoshoot, which looks almost like a series of personal shots of a "real" woman as opposed to an expressionless statue. A very rich, thin, conservatively feminine woman -- ie, Erdem's precise customer base.

As a palate cleanser, here are my two favourite outfits from the 2012 Resort collection, which retained far more of the enticingly crisp, fresh Erdem character.

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Pre-Fall 2012: Diane von Furstenberg, J. Mendel, Moschino Cheap & Chic, Alice + Olivia, and Giorgio Armani.

Diane von Furstenberg

I think that's some kind of... digitalised houndstooth pattern? I'm not sure. What I do know is that it looked enough like houndstooth that I immediately had the stomach-turning fashion thought of, "houndstooth is so in right now". I disgust myself sometimes. It smacks of trend articles like this one, in which Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian's houndstooth outfits are compared/forced to compete for our entertainment. First of all, Gaga's is obviously better because she went marvellously over-the-top with houndstooth accessories, stockings, makeup and piano, playfully turning the "conservative and tweedy" houndstooth image on its head, but secondly... this article exists for realzies. Oh boy. I don't like "who wore it better" gossip stories at all, since they're invariably code for "here are two attractive millionaires in similar outfits -- now, you decide which one is a flawed and hideous creature!" That's not "following fashion". That's petty and needless judgement of strangers based on their appearance.

I'd like this 100x more if the belt and sunglasses were removed, since they turn it into a fairly generic party-dress outfit. Sans belt, the combination of transluscent latex-y dress, visible stocking-tops, severe shoes and  leather gloves make for a rather interesting faux-fetish look.

 

I include this last Von Furstenberg outfit not because I find it particularly interesting, but because of the proportions. If there are any graphic designers/artists reading this, I apologise in advance for my clumsy terminology, but I really like this method of proportioning outfits with one very long section and one marginally shorter. Allow me to illustrate:

Thank you, Microsoft Paint.

This style needs to be quite minimalist and structured to work, but what it boils down to is either a long top over a dress, a short dress over a longer dress, or at a pinch, a dress in a block colour with a strip of a contrasting colour around the hem. I suspect that there's a specific term for this way of disproportionately elongating one element of the outfit/image, but whatever it is it reminds me of Charles Rennie Mackintosh designs:

Fun Scotland fact: Mackintosh knock-offs are called "mockintosh".

J. Mendel

One of those "on the bright side, I can gain ALL the weight" outfits.

Why so bizarrely bulky and unwieldy?? That top/gilet/dress/thing looks like a rug mated with the suade upholstery from the interior of someone's van circa 1976 or so. As it stands, this woman's torso is going to be very warm while her shoulders remain frostbitten, but considering the fact that she's wearing spike heels I assume that she's not planning on spending much time outdoors.

By now you may or may not have noticed that all these outfits include elbow gloves. I hesitate to even label this a "trend" because it's so easy/lazy, but it seems that elbow gloves are a thing. At least your wrists will be warm? Although if you're wearing a dress like this one, they might be the only part of you that is.

Moschino Cheap & Chic

Little did the bear know that these were her taxidermy gloves.

In my opinion the setting of this photoshoot was egregiously cutesy, what with the socks-and-shoes thing and the bright colour palette and the model animals in the background, but I do quite like the clothes in a Chuck-from-Pushing-Daisies/Zooey Deschanel kind of way. The fact that the model looks about twelve doesn't really help matters, though.

 

Alice + Olivia

The backdrop for this photoshoot appeared to be based on mediocre faux-European coffee-shop art, but on the bright side this outfit is SO Carmen Santiago NYC, am I right? (I'd wear it, anyway.)

Giorgio Armani

The masculine accessories (plain, square bag and flat shoes) are what what pushes this outfit from "nice trouser suit" straight over into the "hell, yes" category. Also helpful: the model's Janelle Monae hairstyle.

This shot makes me want a Fifth Element sequel (all that orange rubber!) with a serious-faced female secret agent in the lead role, but I guess I'll have to make do with Men In Black III.

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Pre-Fall 2012: Helmut Lang, Vera Wang, Thakoon, and various other designers who want their models to have chilly knees.

Previously on Pre-Fall 2012: Karl Lagerfeld's interpretation of Indian style, and a bunch of other designers who were considerably less exciting than Chanel.

The reason for my lack of recent posting is that Scotland's recent hurricane (!) (sounds worse than it is) took out my internet/phone lines. Currently I'm embroiled in a war of attrition with my internet service providers, who alternately tell me my internet works (a lie), or that I don't exist (difficult to prove). I take this as a personal slight on my life choices from said internet providers, specifically that they think I should be trudging manfully through the snow looking for Christmas gifts, rather than sitting indoors in the warm and looking at pictures of clothes. But today my connection has been grudgingly upgraded to that of mid-1990s dial-up, so while I can't yet watch last week's season finale of The Killing, or, you know, send emails with attachments, I can flick through a few Style.com galleries.

Dear readers: prepare to be underwhelmed by the banalities of Pre-Fall fashion. Unlike Karl Lagerfeld, these designers do not see the value of a banquet hall or a miniature gold-plated steam train, or, indeed, of a catwalk fashion show. Once again we enter the realm of women doing mannequin impressions in front of blank white walls.

Helmut Lang

Pleasingly assymetrical, and I enjoy the cutaway patterns. Somehow the white jeans manage to look... not-unseasonal? Perhaps white jeans are more tolerable when you can only see them from the mid-thigh downwards.

Giulietta

The 1960s cut of the dress looks great, despite the fact that the collar looks rather cardigan-ish and aging. There are a lot of these Twiggy-esque A-line skirts/dresses with front pockets in the shops right now, but I haven't seen many people actually wearing them so I'm not sure if it's a trend or a failed trend. The major problem with this particular outfit is the tights, which make the model look cold and are kind of inappropriate for the dress. They should have gone with opaque.

Proenza Schouler

Cold knees again.

Thakoon

Blue lips? Now I know they're screwing with me with regards to my "that model looks chilly" stuck-record mantra. Or perhaps I'm just projecting because I live in Scotland and therefore will be wearing 14 layers of unwanted knitwear from now until March.

Love this.

Thakoon was the only designer whose photograph backgrounds showed any signs of humanity.

VPL

Time for that designer who bothers me because their name is an acronym of "Visible Panty Line". This photoshoot looked to me like a photoshoot of Swedish singer Robyn, from the clothes to the background to their choice of model. I do rather like the flash of pink on this outfit's sock!

Vera Wang

The elbow gloves do not work. They look inappropriate to the rest of the outfit and they make her bare knees look chilly (yes, yes, I am aware I should stop belabouring this point). That being said, the shorts-under-dress thing is kind of interesting, even if I myself would not wear the weird, smeary colour print used in the dress.

Ready-To-Wear designs: ur doin it right.

Rag & Bone

The models in the Rag & Bone show all had their hair bound up in scarves like this, and looked great as a result. On the whole most of the outfits looked like Camden Market indie designer clothes, though, which on the whole is not a look I enjoy.

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