Resort 2013: Versace, Louis Vuitton, and the undead return of Juicy Couture.

Francesco Scognamiglio

Today's topic is: funsies! Which is the kind of vocabulary that regularly comes to mind when I'm writing about Resort Season. Most of the collections in this post were dominated by silliness and bright colours, ie the main themes of Resort collections the world over -- at least, when they're not dominated by bland, saleably on-trend basics.

Marni
There's a lot of '70s-inspired designs floating around at the moment, much of them kinda fugly because, let's face it: The '70s. For example, there's certainly something to be said for the growing popularity of outfits that combine layers of skirts and/or mid-length trousers with an overskirt, but not when the fabric is rigid and coloured to match the furniture in Starsky & Hutch. Fashion borrows from itself continuously in a series of 25-year loops, as each old trend gradually transforms from "so old" to "charmingly vintage". The thing about "charmingly vintage", however, is that we get to retroactively edit out the non-hideous trends so only the good stuff survives. The whole point of recycling retro styles is that you get to weed out the stuff that looks like this:

Louis Vuitton
More '70s mid-length trousers, but this time they seem to be going for a Barbie Goes Backpacking kind of look.

Honestly though, this whole collection was a major disappointment for me, mainly because last season's Louis Vuitton looked like this:

Norma Kamali
This collection was inspired by the Olympics, which means that Norma Kamali is my auto-enemy. (Barely an exaggeration.) Seriously, the only good thing the Olympics have inspired so far is this Horrible Histories song. Bias aside, this collection wasn't too bad, successfully avoiding most of the traps of sports-inspired fashion. One thing I would criticise is that although I quite like the dress pictured below, it's a bad idea to use shiny fabrics in clothes that you're explicitly marketing as "affordable". I suspect that most of these clothes look kinda cheap in real life.

NO. This looks like an air stewardess costume from a 1960s-themed advert for those flights rich people hire to go into the upper atmosphere and experience zero-gravity. If your outfit unironically resembles tinfoil Space Fashion from a vintage TV series, Do Not Pass Go.

Skaist-Taylor
I was totes baffled by the hideousness of this photoshoot until I found out that Skaist-Taylor are the people behind Juicy Couture, at which point everything became clear. I mean, why not pair your party-girl frock with a fake fur stole that looks like it was made from furniture coverings, and then pose in front of a vomit/spilled-makeup combo background? Literally no one who buys these clothes is ever going to see the lookbook anyway.

You just know that anyone who buys this suit is going to wear it with that exact same styling. Women's suits are often modeled with no shirt or bra on underneath (because who wants to look at pictures of women where all their flesh is covered??) but then worn "normally" in real life, but I suspect that the Juicy Couture crowd will take this lookbook's advice to heart and pair their pink tuxedoes with silver platform shoes and a pout.

Ter et Bantine
I feel like I have whiplash from switching straight from Skaist-Taylor to the calm and stylish lines of Ter et Bantine. Snobbery-whiplash, that is. Chances are, these two types of outfit will be marketed at exactly the same economic bracket, except the women wearing Skaist-Taylor will be rich because they're reality TV stars while the women wearing Ter et Bantine will be interning at their father's publishing company. Women wearing Skaist-Taylor put their party photos on Facebook; women wearing Ter et Bantine have text-free Tumblr accounts where they reblog The Sartorialist and whimsical photos of coffee paraphernalia.

Thom Browne
Thom Browne is dedicated to designing clothes that look objectively ridiculous, particularly menswear. The deicsion to attempt a marketable Resort collection, therefore, was kind of baffling. While some outfits were entertainingly silly (see below for borderline Willy Wonka cosplay), most were disappointingly bland and adhered to the kind of preppy tameness that I'd expect from... well, anyone but Thom Browne. I mean, for a guy whose last menswear collection combined gimp masks, belly shirts and pastel-checked trouser suits, this show was distinctly unimpressive.

Versace
The faux-masculine slouching, bright colour scheme, Joan Jett hair and spike heels all added up to something that looked like a cross between a K-pop photoshoot and a makeup ad. This isn't something I'd expect from a label this famous but I can't deny that it's fun, even though the collection does seem to skew a lot younger than I'd expect from Versace.

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Menswear Fashion Week and the Zoolander Effect.

It's MENSWEAR FASHION WEEK! Thanks, London, for making Menswear Fashion Week into a thing that exists in real life! (Note to new readers: I love menswear. More detail on that later.)

Christopher Shannon
So, I freely admit that I hate all coverage of "trends", but I'm already starting to notice that at Menswear Fashion Week, bright pink clothes are what I believe is generally known as A Thing. There is a lot of bright pink going on, is what I am saying. I think I can get behind pink shoes as A Thing for men to use to liven up their otherwise boring-ass wardrobes, but something tells me that the pink skirts-made-from-ties are not as likely to catch on.

Whenever I post about menswear I get people commenting all, "LOLLLL, that outfit is so terrible. What were they thinking??" which, you know, is sometimes a good point? But not always. Because when we look at menswear and think "LOLLLL", we're experiencing what I call the Zoolander Effect. In the (awesome) movie Zoolander, the main source of comedy is the idea that the fashion industry is ridiculous, and that the male-oriented fashion industry is extra-ridiculous. I mean, could you make a similar movie about a female supermodel? No! Because even though every womenswear trend in existence is objectively preposterous, we’re so used to it that we don’t even notice any more! Whereas when a man makes a living by looking sexy or outrageous, he's a clown.

I suspect that I'm going to be having this argument forever, but I must persevere because somebody has to take on the heroic task of explaining to people that they're being sexist idiots. The TL;DR version is that there is nothing intrinsically ridiculous about men dressing up. Although there is something intrinsically ridiculous about wearing a cape made from ties. Sorry, Christopher Shannon. Your model looks like he's wearing a rag mop.

E. Tautz
I luv this guy because he looks so serious and Oxbridge with his side-parted edwardian hair and PINK CAPE.

The title of this show was "School Colours For Cricket", which is a reference to an anecdote that combines imperialism, awful posh people, and testicles -- three of Britain's favourite sources of conflict and/or comedy! /o\

James Long
The quantity of baggy, belted long-shorts at Menswear Fashion Week was distressing. Especially when combined with this type of sleeveless '80s shirt.

Jonathan Saunders
What do I love about this collection? Only EVERYTHING! Sharp suits, sharp styling, slightly dangerous-looking men who may or may not be The Corinthian from the Sandman comics...!!

Jonathan Saunders really knows how to use colour. There was a whole rainbow of fruit-smoothie bright colours in this collection, but they're used in such a way that no one could suggest that they look over-the-top.

From Jonathan Saunders' "hot serial-killer" line.

J. W. Anderson
More pink! What did I say?

It's OK, you're allowed to laugh at these outfits. That isn't the Zoolander Effect in action. They might look a bit more ridiculous to our eyes because they're being modeled by men, but these outfits are really... not very good.

Honestly, I think I've already seen this all-sweaters-all-the-time outfit in one of those "Look at these hilarious 1970s fashion catalogues!" blogs.

For anyone wondering what man is likely to wear a sheer shirt-dress with boxers on underneath, the answer is Marc Jacobs, who totally wore one in real life for realsies earlier this month.

Sibling
Terrible. '80s tracksuits mixed with cheap public-transport-upholstery colour schemes? And some kind of... mask thing...? IDEK.

For some reason there are a few menswear designers who really love making all the models wear masks and/or headdresses. I have no idea why. Perhaps they think it upgrades an outfit from "that's kinda bad" to "... but maybe it's ART"?

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Resort 2013: Alexander Wang, Peter Pilotto, Zac Posen, and more.

Alexander Wang
I wonder if Alexander Wang ever just feels too cool and has to have a little sit-down? OK, I kid, but this is the same guy who last year was lauded hither and yon for making the most ~magical~ plain white t-shirt in all of Fashionland, and is consistently successful every single season with a selection of designs that are basically the minimalist android equivalent of sweatpants and hoodies. This season: blocky black-and-white boots to go along with a whole collection of simple monochromatic outfits, all modeled in the coldest and most kidnappy of basements.

Hipster Snape Eveningwear is my fave, so this dress immediately gets my vote. I'm also rather curious as to how one gets in and out of it. Does it... unwrap? No matter. None of us are rich enough to ever try it on, anyway.

I love a Fifth Element strap-shirt as much as the next guy, but Fashionland is going to have to try a lot harder if I'm ever going to join the club of people who approve of cropped and tapered trousers. This pair are by no means the worst in the collection, actually -- evidently Alexander Wang's flirtation with hipster chic has led to a full embrace of the wonders of unflattering grandparent trousers.

Carven
If this was floorlength it'd look like some kind of marvellous faux-medieval gown. As it is, it appears to be dangerously close to my ideal outfit, ie a classic Starfleet uniform minidress made from 17th century Flemish tapestry. (P.S. That last part was deadly serious.)

Dion Lee
TRON.

L'Wren Scott
PERFECT RESORT COLLECTION. The print isn't precisely what I'd have gone for, but the collection as a whole is deliciously summery, cheerful and retro without being too out-there. And it's the hats that really make each of the outfits. Who doesn't want a collection of complementary pillbox hats? Terrible people who don't enjoy Christina Aguilera's Candyman video, I assume.

BRB wearing this to all future job interviews.

Peter Pilotto
I feel like Peter Pilotto has my beloved Mary Katrantzou to thank for a lot of these outfits. I'm not suggesting anything so drastic as plagiarism because there is a certain amount of overlap between these two designers anyway, but this particular collection did combine two of Katrantzou's main design elements: complex digital prints, and structured minidresses.

The print designs come from illuminated manuscripts sourced from the Royal Library in London, and range from stained-glass glowing to some variations on the current trend for symmetrical "tribal" (ughhhh) patterns on skirts and leggings. I picked the trousers below because they kinda look like they have a really fancy rainbow bullseye drawing attention to the model's vagina, which may or may not be the classy effect the designers were originally going for.

Zac Posen
As model choices go, Erin O'Connor was both unexpected and perfect. Age-wise she seems ideal because Zac Posen does tend to skew a little older, somewhere in the Victoria-Grayson-from-Revenge vamp range. And as a model, what is Erin O'Conner known for? Tall, strong, androgynous looks. Zac Posen, however, is known for wasp waists and hourglass-cut suits, implying that not only is the tailoring excellent in this collection, but there's also surely some corsetry going on as well.

I love this suit. So Cruella Deville!

Zac Posen's capsule lable, Z Spoke, gets a far less positive review from me. Like most spinoff labels it's less interesting (and "cheap", at a mere $1000 per item), but the thing that particularly turned me off was the extreme thinness of the model they used for the lookbook photoshoot. I tend to have a higher threshhold than many people when it comes to the unusual appearance of high-end models, mainly because I look at so many fashion photos on a regular basis, but for a single-model Ready To Wear lookbook this kind of casting is just ridiculous. Z Spoke's designs mirror Zac Posen's in that they emphasise narrow waists and are very tightly fitted, but surely this is something that would be showcased more effectively by a model who actually has something to cinch in?

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Prometheus and the fannish mindset: Plotholes Aren't Everything.

Before I start in on the costume reviews, I have a postscript to add to my earlier criticism of this film. Thanks to many of the reasons I mentioned in that post, fans of the original Alien movies have reacted harshly to Prometheus, leading to things like this video by Red Letter Media going viral in a textbook example of fandom's desire to pick everything apart. This isn't going to be one of those times when someone's all, "Stop overthinking everything and ruining everyone's fun!" because that would be blatant hypocrisy ony my part, but I do have one caveat with regards to this kind of list-all-the-faults criticism: It works for literally any movie.

The things about fandom is that we're obsessive, and when something we love jumps the shark, that obsession often turns to the dark side. I understand it, this desire to dissect and rebuild; it's why fanfiction exists. (And fantasy football*, which is pretty much just fanfiction for people who like to delude themselves that they aren't geeks.) Not to mention the zillions of words of blog posts and magazine articles and, at this point, probably books fans have written to try and explain how and why the Star Wars prequels came to be so terrible. I'm often surprised by how non-fannish people can "like" a TV show or movie but only think about it for the couple of hours they're actually watching it -- I mean, why wouldn't you want to Wikipedia all the actors in Stargate: Atlantis and/or write agonisingly detailed reviews of all the costumes in the Avengers franchise? But of course, that dark side I mentioned earlier (ie, the side that leads some people to think that fans are "crazy") means that once you focus the laserbeam of your nerd energy on something you hate, it's super easy to let that can of worms explode in your face, and from then on it's a slippery slope down to Youtube-comment flamewars.

I CANNOT WAIT to see how Bald Xenu Jesus fits into the Director's Cut.

Your mileage may vary as to whether Prometheus was the Worst Thing Ever or just kinda fun-but-mediocre, but wherever you fall on that scale, the "List allllll the plotholes!" method of non-analysis is not going to help. Setting aside the childishness of feeling clever because you proven that something else is stupid, do you know what else was full of plotholes? Every movie you ever loved. I'm not going to get all Leave Britney Alone re: Prometheus, but if Inception taught us anything it's that a film can be riddled with internal inconsistencies and still be critically acclaimed and rated as one of the smartest mainstream blockbusters of the decade.

This is the ancient Vulcan sign for JUST GO WITH IT.

Science fiction thrives on nonsense. The Star Trek reboot movie is a glowing example of fast-paced action comedy and managed the seemingly impossible task of retaining (and satisfying) the most intense and persnickety fanbase in the history of ever, and yet the entire plot hinges on Kirk and Spock Prime coincidentally ending up in the same cave. Of, like, an ice planet where Kirk has literally been dropped at random. Oh, and time travel, a fictional conceit that has a 0% success rate when it comes to logical consistency. The guys at Red Letter Media could make an equally damning plothole list for Star Trek, Blade Runner, and every episode of Doctor Who ever made, because successful storytelling isn't a matter of rooting out and destroying every plothole and inconsistency, it's about making the audience believe.

I am yet to hear anyone complain about the fact that those cave-paintings were the only maps the crew of the Prometheus used to get to another star system through, you know, three-dimensional space.

The problem with Prometheus isn't that the story makes no sense (remember Inception?), it's that Ridley Scott failed to make us suspend our disbelief. And while the laundry list of unexplained dead-ends and scientific bloopers is far, far longer than it should've been, I still think that they could've pulled it off if the execution hadn't been so damn clunky. Ridley Scott made Blade Runner and Alien over thirty years ago, but I'm getting the impression that he still doesn't understand science fiction audiences. It's not enough to make a film look like it's in space, or to do really detailed research on terraforming. For all that books like The Science Of Superman sell like hotcakes, most of us are willing to swallow any old non-scientific ridiculousness, provided it's propped up with a story that flows well and has a solid base of emotional truth. Unfortunately, Prometheus didn't manage either of those things, and that left it open to this death by a thousand cuts of fan-criticism.

Oh, and just as an indicator of what works and what doesn't when it comes to suspension of disbelief, here's a short list of some of the objectively silly things in Prometheus that I was able to accept at face value. You know, unlike the whole, "OMG, Human DNA is the same as Engineer DNA!! We're all descended from Bald Xenu Jesus! ...Wait, what about the dinosaurs?" thing.

1. David being able to "watch your dreams". Was this a cheesy conceit, clearly inserted just to illustrate Shaw's Tragic Backstory? Yes. But was I bothered by the basic fact of this being possible? No. As proven by the central premise of movies like Inception and Minority Report, it's not the believability of the technology that counts, it's how you use it.
2. People being scared shitless. Once you accept the fact that this ship was crewed apparently at random, and by a collection of incompetents and borderline cultists, then it was perfectly consistent for them to start running around like headless chickens as soon as the terrifying alien menace showed up. In fact, this was more "realistic" than the supposedly hard-as-nails space marines in Aliens, who I could only ever assume were the worst space marines ever because they were constantly terrified by everything and had the tactical instincts of a flock of lemmings**.
3. The myriad of coincidences required to make any deep-space exploration movie flow correctly. What, the gravity on LV-223 was totally Earth-standard? And the environment within the crashed Engineer spaceship had the perfect layout for chase sequences and for the little flying droid thingies to map it out in a cinematically appealing way? How convenient! (Because it's fiction.)
4. The surgery pod. Technology is sufficiently advanced in 2093 that androids are about ten minutes from scaling the final peak of the Uncanny Valley, and yet Weyland's state-of-the-art medical facility seems to have been designed by someone who had never met a human before. The surgery pod scene was like every primal claustrophobia, pregnancy and surgery nightmare rolled into one, and that's why it was one of the best scenes of the movie. For this reason I don't really care that no one would ever design a remote medical unit that holds your still-conscious body down while pincers whir over your face like some kind of gleaming iPod/torture-chamber hybrid. It's a horror story.

I'm sure people will disagree with some of these items, but my point is that when you pay to see a mainstream sci-fi movie then you're basically tearing up your Realism Club membership card. There will always be something that doesn't make sense, and the mark of a science fiction film's quality is how many of those things it can make you ignore.

* I had to google "fantasy football" just to make sure it was what I thought it was. Yes, I am my own nerd-joke punchline. 
** Do lemmings travel in flocks? Or herds?? Answers on a postcard.

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Prometheus: Proof that epic sci-fi doesn't belong in the Alien franchise.

Previously: Disturbing viral marketing for Prometheus: Happy birthday David, from Weyland Industries.

My feelings about Prometheus are very mixed. As a grown-up sci-fi blockbuster movie, it was excellent, albeit a little cumbersome at times, but as a prequel to Alien it really didn't seem to know what it was doing. The pre-movie marketing included a lot of extra information on the extended universe -- a timeline of Weyland Industries' technological developments; background on Michael Fassbender's android character David; an in-character TED lecture from the fictional billionaire Peter Weyland -- but the film itself included very little of that worldbuilding, and not in the sparsely-written, isolated sense of Alien. Compared to the fast-paced thriller tone of the film as a whole, the reoccuring themes of religious belief and creationism seemed clumsy and out-of-place.
I feel like Prometheus must be a very different film to people who have no previous experience of the Alien franchise. Aside from the handful of lines that were objectively clunky, my main problem with this film lies in the way it relates to the Alien franchise, particularly Alien itself. Each of the Alien movies is different: The first is a slow-build horror movie, the second is a military adventure story, the third (in addition to being a total mess) is an action thriller set in a prison, and Alien Resurrection is a sci-fi blockbuster. The one theme that all four of these movies share is that shadowy, distant corporations control the characters' lives without them knowing it, and are happy to kill the worker ants in the name of profit. They tried to include this theme in Prometheus, but in terms of internal consistency within the premise of the mission (to explore an alien moon for signs of life) it didn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

Given that Peter Weyland is one of the richest and most powerful people in existence and that the Prometheus' journey to LV-223 is a trillion-dollar investment, I assumed that this was a well-publicised exploratory mission, albeit one where the religious undertones of their research were being kept under wraps. Taking this into consideration, one would think that the crew of the Prometheus must be the best of the best: Shaw and Holloway as the leaders, and the other scientists coming along to help with on-planet survival and any research that isn't directly connected to the Engineers and/or "finding God". However, when the crew is first introduced, we learn that they don't even know why they're there. Why not? Why did they sign up to go on a deep-space exploratory mission if they didn't know what they were doing or even who they were going to be working with? One of them wonders if they're going to be working on terraforming (which makes sense if you know the Weyland slogan: "Building Better Worlds"), and the rest are just there to provide backup, loose cannons every one. Seeing as Weyland is rich enough to build his own spaceship to fly off on a vanity mission to find god, and Vickers (Charlize Theron) is obsessed with "minimizing risk", this seems like an extraordinarily impractical recruitment strategy.

In Alien, the crew of the Nostromo are working stiffs and have very little personal stake in the work they do for Weyland-Yutani. Likewise in the sequels, most of the primary characters are low on the corporate food-chain and are unaware that they're being screwed over by their bosses. But while the Nostromo is a mining ship crewed by the famous "truckers in space", the Prometheus is more like the Starship Enterprise, crewed by academics, idealists, and explorers. It would have made far more sense for the crew to begin the film with a sense of well-organised confidence, and then have the first signs of conflict appear as they discover that their well-planned mission is not what it seems, that they've unknowingly been providing cover for a religious megalomaniac all along.

The basic problem is that Prometheus tries to occupy an impossible hinterland between the world of sci-fi epics and the world of the Alien franchise. Star Wars is a myth about rebellion and heroism, Star Trek is about a crew of peacekeepers and scientists exploring the wonders of the galaxy, and the Alien franchise is a series of horror stories set within a cynical universe where no one cares if our beloved protagonist lives or dies. Prometheus, on the other hand, is a story about a scientist's search for God, an aging trillionaire's search for immortality, and the dangers of hubris when it comes to creating life in "unnatural" ways. These are all common sci-fi themes, but they don't really gel with the Alien universe. Up until now, the Alien franchise has dealt with amoral corporate lackies, tired blue-collar workers, violent convicts, and incompetent soldiers. It's difficult for Prometheus to exist within the context of a series where most characters are far more interested a steady paycheck than in the meaning of life.

Maybe it would've been possible to successfully tell an epic story about God and creation within the Alien extended universe, but not without removing most of the references to Alien itself. It didn't help that every scene that took place outside the spaceship was purposefully designed to provoke a feeling of awe and wonder. It seems strange to be complaining about the design and visuals of a film being too good, but I found that it muddied the waters to have to concentrate on individual human fears and the sense of "Oh, wow, we're on an alien planet full of untold wonders," at the same time.
 

There were several aspects of the film that failed to live up to the marketing, but Peter Weyland's casting was, to me, the most confusing. Guy Pearce performed the TED Talk used in the film's viral marketing campaign, and his name was in the credits of the movie, so many viewers would be aware before the film even started that Guy Pearce would be appearing at some point. This meant that his old man prosthetics were extremely distracting, because all the way through I knew that Guy Pearce was lurking underneath, and why the hell would they hire a young actor to play an old man? I spent the entire time waiting for him to be magically de-aged by some alien technology. Did they cast Guy Pearce just so he could do the viral marketing campaign?? Wouldn't it have been more effective to hire an unknown actor to play the young Peter Weyland, and someone like Peter O'Toole to play the older version in the film itself? To make matters more confusing, another Weyland video was released after the film came out.

screencap from here.

While I do believe that Prometheus failed as a prequel to the Alien franchise (and, more simply, that God should stay out of sci-fi unless you go for the full-on cheesy Chariots Of The Gods schtick, as seen in Stargate), there were some Alien quadrilogy nods that I did enjoy. David playing basketball was a fun reference to Alien Resurrection, and the production design (which I'll tackle in a separate post) was full of little details that harked back to the aesthetic of the other Alien movies. And, criticism aside, it was nailbiting thriller. The action scenes were frightening and avoided the kind of obviously unrealistically cliches one often sees in movies of this size, and the moments of visceral horror were incredibly well-executed.

Next: Costume design and the crew of the Prometheus. 

Links
My previous posts on the Alien franchise. 
Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About. This review focuses on the religious aspects of the film, including Ridley Scott's original (horrible) idea to include a Jesus-like figure among the Engineers.
Featurette on the visual effects of Prometheus.
Five ways to improve Prometheus.
Reddit: The Secrets of Prometheus: Explained.

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