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Leave it to Marc Jacobs to deliver a neon-hued, big-shouldered, crimpy-haired
eighties antidote to the gloom and doom of 2009. “I was thinking
about the good old days in New York,” he said after the show, “when
getting dressed up was such a joy.” By the good old days, Jacobs
means the nights he spent at clubs like Area, the Palladium, and Paradise
Garage. Maybe it was the recent Stephen Sprouse project he completed at
Louis Vuitton, or perhaps it’s the fact that he now lives in Paris full
time, but his Fall show was a big, juicy nostalgic kiss to a city that
doesn’t really exist anymore.
The show started simply enough, with a gray cardigan sweater and charcoal
trousers, but when the model walked past, you saw the back half of a kilt
and braces—Jacobs’ new uniform—and knew it was going to get
personal. He worked his way through little silver-and-black A-line shifts;
party dresses in metallic leathers and floral brocades with flaring, full
skirts and monster shoulders; velvet bustier tops and high-waisted over-dyed
jeans; and Crayola-bright jackets, capes, and hooded coats. The only filter
that separated these clothes from their East Village forebears was the
expensive, luxury fabrics they came in. Every girl had a different hairdo,
shellacked into Mohawks, flips, and bouffants, and the makeup was straight
off the album cover of Duran Duran’s Rio. The cumulative effect of all
that color, volume, and optimism? One editor called it “A Flock of
Seagulls meets Alexis Carrington.”
Will fashion as outrageously ebullient as this—in some cases, make
that just plain outrageous—sell in the harsh reality of the late
aughts? (And talking about harsh: More than 1,000 people were nixed from
the invitation list this season in a cost-cutting slash and burn.) Jacobs
insists that he wasn’t thinking about the economy when he was working
on the collection, and maybe he wasn’t. These days, wagering that women
will splash out on feel-good clothes is as good a bet as any.
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