Spring 2013 Fashion Week: Erdem and Vivienne Westwood Red Label

Vivienne Westwood Red Label
The beauty of Vivienne Westwood is that she can start off with literally any theme and still have the resulting show turn out like a giant "fuck you". With this season's Red Label collection she went for a ladylike mid-20th-century aesthetic, using boxy woollen suits and 1950s cocktail dresses as a jumping-off point.

The styling helped a lot to temper the relatively conservative nature of this collection, with models stepping out onto the catwalk wearing Crayola-hued facepaint and Stepford-parody hairstyles. This wasn't my favourite Westwood collection, perhaps because for once she didn't seem to be designing for her own personal wardrobe. I often find that Westwood is at her best -- or at least, at her most Westwood, which is pretty much the same thing -- when she's courting outright ugliness, rather than this watered-down throwback to the period when she was mocking the fashions of the British aristocracy.

pics from Style.com

Word from the horse's mouth is that Westwood "doesn't care" about fashion any more, and that her main focus is "Climate Revolution" -- a slogan whose banner she unfurled at the end of the show. I'm not even gonna start on shit like this, because a) 99% of all fashion-based political campaigns are doomed from the start because they insist on statement-free slogans like "Climate Revolution", and b) unfurling a banner at the end of a fashion show is not activism. There's something very Zoolander about producing a show that touches on a political theme (the outfits are apparently influenced by recycled fashions) while simultaneously saying you "don't care" about fashion any more, and trying to put forth a political/social statement.

Erdem
Erdem Moriaglu's speciality is delicate floral patterns and neat, precise tailoring. This season he went for an unexpectedly neon turn, combining bright, almost clashing colours with snakeskin print. His inspiration was Zenna Henderson, the 20th century sci-fi author, and the result was a look that combines 1950s femininity with hints of alienness, both in the slightly-too-bright fabric choices and in the touches of snakeskin.

I decided to write about Westwood and Erdem together not because they share an aesthetic, but because their collections this season are so thematically similar. Although Westwood's designs were supposedly meant to come from a place of thriftiness and recycling (Climate Revolution! ...Or something.), what they actually look like is a typically punkish Westwood twist on conservative formalwear. Likewise, Erdem's designs were a mirror-world interpretation of his previous collections -- neat and girly, but using snakeskin and purposefully tacky colour-schemes to ofset the delicacy of each outfit.

Oh, and for extra sci-fi cred, this show took place inside a giant geodesic dome.

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Erdem: 2013 Resort Collection.

When reviewing high-end fashion, I tend to detach my own dress sense from my overall judgement of the designs. Given a boatload of cash, I'd probably wade straight into the deep end of couture fashion with brands like Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh, bypassing the more "wearable" options entirely. Erdem Moriaglu's clothes are my one foray into the pretty, feminine side of mainstream high-end fashion. Despite the plethora of florals and delicate New York Heiress At A Tea Party silhouettes, there's something sharp enough about Erdem's style that I can't help but love him season after season.

Photos: Erdem/Boo George.

Erdem's designs vacillate between ethereally floaty and demurely structured, and all appear to be aimed at the type of woman who never encounters dirt or breaks the ankle-straps on her shoes. In the past he's experimented the kind of super-smart coats and suits that are worn by terrifyingly stylish New York society matrons, giving the houndstooth and floral patterns enough modern digital-print youthfulness that there's no danger of them seeming stuffy or old-fashioned.

Possibly it's just down to the styling of the models for this photoshoot (and the fact that the Snow White & The Huntsman trailer has caused me to develop a deeply tragic crush on her), but I think that Kristen Stewart would look great in a lot of these outfits -- her stylists tend to favour lots of bare legs but avoid the kind of sexy-starlet outfits most actresses in her peer group tend to go for.

OK, so this season we have the usual Erdem elements combined demureness and peculiarity, with colour choices dialled up far further than "normal" conservative outfits like these would do. Some of the outfits are a little boring (WASP-y neckerchiefs combined with simple knee-length skirts, and flowery dresses) but still on-trend enough (patterned trouser-suits with narrow legs; rorschach-like skirt prints) that they're certain to be successful. Erdem's designs seem to cater to quite a specific audience -- unfortunately, an audience that's already over-catered to: slim women who want to look classy and rich. In a way, it's very dated, this combination of fragile imagery and implicit wealth, and there are definite hints of retro mid-20th-century styles in Erdem's designs. Belted, high-waisted skirts, for example, and the general lack of exposed skin.

The pinker of the two dresses pictured below is my favourite outfit of the collection. Adhering to the simple, conservative knee-length dress silhouette, Erdem livens it up with the kind of detailing for which he is famous. The acid-pink highlights are weird enough that it managed to avoid falling into Michele Obama territory (by no means a bad thing in general -- just not suitable for this collection), and the translucent cut-outs on the back and arms have a kind of skeleton-leaf quality to them that I can't help but love.

The translucent dresses are really an excellent representation of what Erdem does best: taking traditional elements of womenswear design and twisting them ever-so-slightly so they become subtly daring and weird without quite leaving the trad/femme comfort zone. With most other designers that kind of description wouldn't be a compliment (from me, anyway), but Erdem's attention to detail means that even his simplest of designs often seem to have some aspect of sharp strangeness to them. While the paisley-pattern dress pictured below is tissue-thin and short enough that in a different pose, it might look like a party dress, the rought, torn-off quality of the collar makes it seem far more fragile and delicate.

Previous Erdem posts: Pre-Fall 2012.

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