January 24, 2017 |
If the Village People, or, for that matter, the Pet Shop Boys, had not gone west, but east, then they probably would have ended up somewhere around here. Because Schiaparelli’s SS17 Haute Couture offering, their first since becoming an official Haute Couture house once again, was about looking eastward – “Chinoiserie at heart,” the collection was titled. But banish any thoughts of cheap0y cultural rip-offs – instead, it was more about those ideas of opulence at the heart of traditional Chinese and Japanese dressing, siphoned here through the filter of Schiaparelli’s surrealist lens. Which, in real terms, meant the hanfu and kimono (which Elsa herself sashayed about her house wearing) became a loose inspiration – not so much in shape (though there were obi-style belts and Cheongsam-ish tailoring) but in that richness of fabric – traditional woodblock-style florals, jacquards with a golden sheen, dragon embellishments. Fantasy dressing, basically. O-p-u-l-e-n-c-e!
