I’m not sure if readers remember a kids TV show from the early nineties entitled Clarissa Explains it All on the Nickelodeon network, I’m going to assume that you don’t. It was a somewhat obscure show starring then unknown child actress Melissa Joan Hart. In it, she would break the fourth wall and explain to the audience watching what goes on in a typical teenager’s life. Somehow I felt it necessary to mention that because that’s what Nicolas Ghesquiere did with his Spring 2008 collection. He broke the fourth wall of fashion design in a way, unlike what most designers have done for the Spring 2008 season. Let’s start with the colors and work our way down. There was nothing like it during any of the four fashion weeks. A vibrant mashup of floral prints permeated throughout the collection, while stiff structurally fit shoulders gave each dress a distinct look. The collection made the models appear as if they were colorful toy soldiers right down to the hips that naturally took the shape of a bell.
Ghesquiere took fashion’s fourth wall and ran a bulldozer right through it. He simply acknowledged the decadence of Spring for what it was: flowers, colors, prints and let us all in on the secret. The hips, colors and pocketbooks don’t (and won’t) lie, it was a winner.
What others are saying about the collection:
Cathy Horyn of the New York Times writes:
No, Mr. Ghesquiere’s flower power feels emotionally stronger, more charged. If the fields of pansies, hydrangeas and peonies on the sleek surface of the couture silks lift your heart, it’s not because they are beautiful, though they are. It’s because we sense in them the extreme willfulness of the designer. How many designers would have the temerity to use something as bourgeois as a flower print, and then build an entire collection around it?
Well, the answer is both Mr. Ghesquiere and Cristobal Balenciaga.
Sarah Mower of Style.com writes:
But would this be wearable? What a silly question. If Ghesquière’s extreme embroidered “robot” leggings can sell out for squillions of dollars apiece, and last season’s jodhpurs, blazers, scarves, and ikat prints can fuel a global industry of knockoffs, what has he left to prove? By the time you read this, the flower-printing mills of the world will have been activated overnight.
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