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We may scoff at many of the outlandish
designs paraded at London Fashion Week, but how much does the catwalk
influence the average wardrobe?
Fashion is all about being noticed, right?
Well, yes and no.
As London Fashion Week gets into its strut,
predictably, it is the most outrageous outfits that are making the headlines.
First up for the title of Enfant Terrible
2001, was Polish-born designer Arkadius Weremczuk, who stole the opening
day with a collection that included two models wearing different halves
of the same suit.
The London-based designer, who tends to
go by his first name only, also exhibited a corset with a balloon-like
sphere covering the upper body of the model who was wearing it.
That creation might have had the assembled
photographers snapping with delight, but to the uninitiated it looked
like a bulbous beekeeper's mask. And therein lies the age-old point
- is this fashion for the masses in all its undiluted glory, or just
a cynical ploy to get the media in a froth and hence some cheap publicity?
Street wear
The couture world naturally shuns any charge
of opportunism, claiming instead that the influence of even the most
radical outfits eventually filters through to the High Street multiples.
There are some notable examples. The public
guffawed at Jean-Paul Gaultier's "pointy bra" creation in the late 1980s
but there was no looking back once the Frenchman had Madonna on-board,
sporting the cone-shaped brassiere.
In recent years there has been much talk
about "underwear as outerwear" - ordinary folk have become positively
eager to offer glimpses of the designer smalls beneath their regular
attire. But sometimes, it seems, fashion is simply for fashion's sake.
Stylist Mo White, who has worked with many
of London's top designers, spoke out last year to dismiss the notion
that all catwalk creations filter down. "Outrageous designs are only
on the catwalk to try to attract attention," Ms White told a daily newspaper.
"They are being shown to try and catapult them into the newspapers and
the designers into jobs. Many of the outfits are never meant to be worn."
There are perhaps many notable examples.
Arkadius was not alone in making a tabloid splash on the first day of
London Fashion Week. Another headline-grabber was Russell Sage's dress
made of sterling banknotes - about £10,000 worth. And who remembers
Suitsyu Siritsveriyu's dress made entirely of After Eight mints? Or
Hussein Chalayan's coffee-table skirt - literally a coffee table that
converted into a skirt.
But does it matter that these outlandish
designs will never make it into your nearest branch of New Look or Dorothy
Perkins? After all, fashion is supposed to be fun.
Fashion victim
Not according to Lisa Armstrong, fashion
writer for The Times, who has seriously questioned the motives of many
designers.
"From the various sexual fetishes on parade
to the facile rubbish that spewed out on to the catwalks during the
past month... it seemed that designers were out to get women, or at
least make them look foolish," she asked recently.
So could the continued fashion for sending
female models before the world part naked or in approximations of bondage
betray a sign of the industry's misogyny? "Clearly creativity is about
pushing boundaries, but why is it always this one?"
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