April 24, 2014 |
RALPH LAUREN: THE MONOCHROME SET
I like to think that the Ralph Lauren spring/summer collection was dedicated to the musical legacy of Michael Jackson. Because isn’t it time someone celebrated Michael Jackson’s musical legacy rather than dwell on his untimely death, shrouded in mystery as it is? And if so, why shouldn’t that person be Ralph, who has obviously – well, obviously to me – built his entire vision for the warmer season around the immortal line “it’s black, it’s white, it’s all the colours, yeah yeah”, which might not be a line from the song exactly, but for the purposes of this it is? It started off with a symphony of black and white before bursting into and aria of full-blown, floor-sweeping colour. It was, as Ralph put it, “a touch of everything I felt was new and hasn’t been seen before by a lot of young people. I don’t like to go backwards, but I like to carry on with what I think is beautiful and make it better”. The touch of everything new and not seen before by a lot of young people was the 1960s. And even if they have seen it, they certainly haven’t seen it from Ralph. A mod-ish schoolgirl dressed in short hemlines and high necklines, with knee-high socks and patent leather mary-janes. All in black and white and topped off with space-age-y plastic goggles. The black and white was printed with geometric grids and bold stripes and finished off with a geometric hem. They looked girlish. And very stylish. Like something out of Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo. The black and white stripe scene. Where the models, all dressed in the same wide black and white stripes, are sitting at a long make-up table against a wall painted in the same wide black and white stripes. They all have the same heavy black eyes with thick lashes, and the same Vidal Sassoon five-point cut. Look it up on YouTube. It could well be the “not seen before” of which he spoke. Though probably not. As people have seen it. Just fewer than, say, X-Men. Or The Craft. But that was more Catholic schoolgirls who were also witches, so not very Catholic. Though it has to be said the hemlines and socks are rather rebellious Catholic schoolgirl. As are the mini-pleats. The bad one who hangs out behind the bike shed smoking cigarettes who you want to be friends with. The similarities end there, though. The Ralph girl is far too put together to hang out behind a bike shed. A 1960s icon has class. She’s far more likely to take her shift dress and cigarettes somewhere more uptown and classy and shamelessly sit at a bar, sipping on a vodka martini and puffing away in full view of anyone who should happen to enter. Well, hanging out behind bike sheds is a messy business, especially if one is wearing white. And black. Besides, no aspiring mod-ish socialite would ever stand outside in the cold.
By Natalie Dembinska
