Concrete Chic

There is always that one question when it comes to style that has always raised debate. Do the streets inspire fashion or does fashion inspire the streets? When collections come out each season, are the pieces purely a result of what a designer has envisioned in his mind free of any outside influences? Or, at some level, are certain elements presently dominating on the streets somehow infused into the future of fashion?

The rising popularity and credibility of street style blogs like The Sartorialist, Lookbook or FaceHunter has changed the universal perception on what is considered essentially chic and stylish. And, at some point, this has also supported the belief that to an extent, fashion is defined by what is out on the streets. While certainly, fashion magazines continue to play an influential role in our fashion preferences, many have also began to look at what is actually happening out there as a reference for the looks that will be definitive in the seasons to come.

This season, there has been buzz over what is referred to as “Real World” dressing. Instead of the usual fantastical or theatrical approach in design, today’s leading vanguards seem to be finding inspiration from the more mundane things around them. At Proenza Schouler, for instance, design dream team Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez worked on a collection that suits the active lifestyle utilizing fabrics, colors and cuts that are inspired by surf and skateboarding, which gave birth to a young, fresh and nonchalantly stylish look for the label.

Similarly, Haider Ackermann’s nod to military dressing infused relaxed, soigné silhouettes through satin cargo pants, rolled up shorts and outsized vests loosely cinched at the waist. Leaning towards a slightly gothic look, Ackermann similarly opened his show with an assembly of sober grays and blacks — hues that seem to be making its presence felt even post Fall/Winter.

In talking about street style, it would be absolutely impossible not to mention fashion’s current boy wonder, Christophe Decarnin, whose biker-chic-meets-’80s-sparkle ensembles for Balmain was a phenomenal success not only among fashion’s elite (who wouldn’t mind shelling out a good 9,000€ for a jacket) but also the mainstream crowd.

The man behind the revival of Balmain, Decarnin’s current collection for Spring Summer 2010, has without doubt caused quite a stir as it featured tattered t-shirts, holed jeans and military jackets with holes on them that resemble bullet shots. More notably, the reaction of other mass distribution companies like H&M or Zara — each producing almost identical copies of Balmain’s military jackets and tattered shirts and jeans and selling it at prices that a wider market can afford — only raises the question of whether the upper class, more specifically the wearers of Balmain, pioneered the widespread street style trend or if it was instead a trend taken from the mainstream and later adapted into high fashion.

Also recently, many style blogs have also been zooming in on the utterly casual gingham shirts but instead of the usual blues and reds, they are instead prescribing as the fashion must-have gingham shirts in gray paired with blacks or other monotonous pieces as best executed by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld for his resort collection or Isaac Mizhari.

In this season in fashion, is it still valid to assume that the catwalks have invaded the streets or is it the other way around? Regardless of how one might perceive the movement or progression of trends, it’s nonetheless good to know that we’ve reached an age where style does not only constitute what is aesthetically pleasing and inspiring, it, moreover, hails what is viable from the sketch pad to the mannequins to the ad campaigns and finally, to the streets.