Visions in velvet, skirts as sculptures

SHANGHAI, China – One cannot underestimate the thrill of the three-dimensional experience brought on by a fashion exhibition. Examining the works of creative geniuses up close in a setting where clothes are presented as art gives one a better understanding of a designer’s vision. It elicits an awe-inspiring feeling. I remember lingering all afternoon at the Philip Treacy exhibit in London, just savoring that heady feeling. It is therefore not surprising that thousands of fashion devotees (designers and hardcore fashionistas) flock to the Musee de la Mode in Paris to view exhibits such as the recent one by Yohji Yamamoto and last year’s Viktor & Rolf. The Victoria & Albert Museum, with almost an encyclopedic resource housing a vast collection of historical costumes, art, jewelry, and textiles, attracts more than two million visitors a year.

Luckily for me, this creative endeavor to educate and inspire hit closer to my second home, Shanghai. Just recently, two of the most influential designers of our time chose to mount their touring exhibits here. Prada’s Waist Down exhibit and Vivienne Westwood’s 30-year retrospective proved that both designers are indeed omnipotent forces in fashion today – that they are true creators of fashion and not just mere fashion designers.

Thumbs Up To Waist Down

The Waist Down exhibit paid homage to the ubiquitous skirt and provided the viewer an opportunity to see them as objets d’art. Designs and innovations of the skirt are often overlooked due to their familiarity. "The skirt – a plane that envelopes a woman from the waist down – translates and expresses movements in sync with the body’s motion into a thousand forms." Whoa! I was taken aback as I read this profound description of what we simply know as a skirt.

The collection consisted of pieces from Prada dating back to 1988. I had the pleasure of viewing this exhibit with Rep. Imee Marcos, a self-confessed fashion collector (but more of a Miu Miu girl than a Prada disciple).

At the lobby of the legendary Peace Hotel, we were dwarfed by gigantic installations of runway images. It was visually striking and stimulating enough so for me, that alone was worth my trip to the Bund.

When we got off the elevator, we were greeted by several skirts suspended from the ceiling, spinning and swirling like choreographed ballerinas doing a pirouette. As we made our way to the suites, there were a couple of racks with knee-length skirts on hangers that swung from side to side in a pendulum-like motion. Imee simply described it as "trippy." We took a peek under the skirts to check if there were little people hanging underneath doing roundhouse kicks that caused the skirts to move. They had cleverly hidden a metal gadget that caused this funny movement.

Inside the suites, we were visually engaged. It was fanciful eye candy: skirts as sculptures or lampshades, some opened up and vacuum-packed in plastic sheets. Several skirts were camouflaged by backgrounds such as curtains, a tablecloth, and bed sheets of the same material. Diaphanous skirts were displayed on glowing mannequins lit from within to show various degrees of transparency.

There were also projections of moving shadows of the skirts to highlight silhouette and details. The more elaborate skirts, such as one festooned with peacock feathers, were displayed with a giant magnifying lens to show its intricate craftsmanship. All these concepts were expertly arranged to achieve a graceful flow of the exhibit that inhabited the international suites on the seventh floor.

The vintage feel of the classic aged interiors of the Peace Hotel with a dramatic view of the Huangpu River and the modern Pudong skyline provided an interesting backdrop – a layering of images that resulted in an arresting display, offering the viewer a unique visual experience.

Prada’s Waist Down exhibit left me looking up to the brand as a moving force in dissolving the line between fashion and art. Such is Miuccia Prada’s pioneering approach to design and store innovations, constantly pushing its boundaries and setting new trends to reinvent retail into a unique shopping experience. It will obviously remain ahead of the fashion curve with its continuous creative collaborations with renowned curators, designers, architects, museums, and universities.

It is quite amazing how a show like this can change one’s views on an everyday common object like a skirt. Seeing it through the creative lens of Miuccia Prada is inspiring enough to make you want to hang that iconic lipstick skirt in the living room.

The Coolness Of Corsets

"Mind-boggling, incredible, amazing, and a revelation." This is how Vivienne Westwood describes her recent exhibition at the snobbish Bund 18. Co-curated by the Victoria and Albert Museum, this same exhibition, which attracted nearly 180,000 viewers in a three-month period in London, was the most successful fashion exhibit ever held at the museum. It features around 150 designs from the V&A collections and from the designer’s personal archive.

I am not a fan of the punk movement, much less studs, chains, and zippers, but Vivienne Westwood has remained a constant in my top tier of fave fashion designers. I have always embraced her constant reinterpretation of romance. Corsets, her most remarkable trademark, have become a wardrobe staple in every fashion-savvy closet. Her clever and adventurous designs, sometimes humorous or shocking, with gentle parody (bordering on mockery) of British royalty and tradition, has made her designs unique and easily identifiable. The combination of fearless nonconformity and innovativeness, while paying homage to tradition and "British-ness," has allowed her collections to transcend the parameters of archetypal beautiful clothes.

As I entered the hall, I could hear Westwood’s familiar voice with a thick British accent eerily echoing in the background as if she was present in the room. Explaining the basis of her nostalgic concepts and her fascination for historical costumes, she said:

"I take something from the past that has a sort of vitality that has never been exploited, like the crinoline, and get very intense. In the end you do something original because you overlay your own ideas. Essentially, when you analyze where the glamour is in clothes, the romance, it is in something that people have seen before. It’s like a perfume. You think, ‘I know that smell. It’s reminding me of something else as well.’"

The sound came from a flat-screen monitor showing a documentary on the designer’s works, with snippets of runway and backstage video of her past shows. I eagerly listened to any snappy sound bytes, taking down notes in my little black notebook.

The exhibit was arranged by period, which begins with a display of her early collaborations with first husband, Malcolm McLaren. This highlights the vital role the couple played in the emergence of punk rock in ’70s fashion. To them, music and fashion are inextricably linked. Their King’s Road shop was filled with sexually charged pieces that alluded to bondage, voyeurism, and fetishism. Latex outfits, the Sex Pistols’ leather biker’s jackets, T-shirts decorated with chicken bones, the "rubber Johnny suit." A famous piece was the controversial "Tits Dress." It was a cotton knit unisex T-shirt (with a dress version) with an unsettling image of breasts emblazoned on the chest.

The ’80s collection saw a more recharged vision and prominently shifts the viewer’s mood. The "Pirate" and "Nostalgia of Mud" still had traces of her punk roots but the succeeding collections transition into more refined clothes. This is where she came to a realization that she could actually be a serious designer. The most memorable was the Petrushka Ballet inspired "Mini-crini" collection – reminiscent of old-fashioned party frocks. It was both childish yet sexy, with polka and striped patterns borrowed from Disney characters.

There was a strong emphasis on her reworking of 18th-century corsets, which were mounted on suspended bust-forms. One piece I found very stunning was Westwood’s interpretation of the dress worn by Madame de Pompadour in a portrait by Boucher. It was a taupe gown in silk with a dramatic neckline and sharply curved seams that produced a very interesting sculptured silhouette. I think this period saw a maturity in her designs derived from her newfound interest in French art and literature.

Her tailored pieces, which she proudly admits were inspired by Dior and Balenciaga, are proof of her maverick skills in the cutting and piecing of fabric rooted in traditional tailoring techniques. She creates powerful visual illusions through her innovative approach in cutting and draping, deliberately altering the silhouette – sometimes creating exaggerated bulges on the hips and "arse."

Westwood said, "I’ve got a real sense of the 3-D geometry. I can look at a piece of garment and know that if I put a slit in it and make some fabric travel around in a square, then when you lift it up, it will drape in a certain way… You have to have that connection, synthesizing things from the past. Exploring the fabric and pushing them into something they’ve never been before. After all, fashion is the manipulation of fabric."

Also featured were dresses worn by Sex and the City fashion heroine Carrie Bradshaw, as well as gowns worn by supermodel Linda Evangelista, and Cameron Diaz. A tailored jacket with a photo-print of the designer’s own bookshelf, a reworked heather-gray sweatshirt, and a deep-purple silk taffeta ball gown were a few of my favorites. The snazzy platform shoes that caused Naomi Campbell to slip on the runway in 1993 sat in an acrylic vitrine case, adding novelty to the display. The evening gowns – "the belle epoque of unrestrained grandeur" – were a breathtaking finale.

At this point, I was so immersed in the world of Westwood – crinolines, corsets, tartans, velvet, taffeta, tulle, frock coats, riding jackets, bustles, peplums, platforms, pantaloons. The show mirrored her love affair with all these recurring elements in her designs. It also illustrated the metamorphosis of her design sensibilities in the past three decades, from "rubbish punk" to a refined modern-day romantic.

Vivienne Isabelle Swire, or Vivienne Westwood – a self-educated, design school dropout – through her passion for and discovery of the past via literature, music and applied arts, has become a great source of inspiration for designers around the world. She is one of fashion’s high and mighty. She deserves not a glittering tiara... but a fashionable Harris Tweed crown.

Long live the Queen of Brit Cool!