Yeezy – Season 5
As my eyes followed the denim-covered legs, the jeans seemed to go on for ever – up, up until the shoulders and face were disappearing to infinity.
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Welcome to the new Yeezy collection from Kanye West in collaboration with Adidas Originals. After taking the rap last season for the show being baking hot, too long, too drawn out, and too tough on the fainting models, the music baron and wanna-be designer humbly suggested that blown-up images could be striking enough.
He was not wrong. For it was a smart idea to put models – of both sexes – onto a rotating platform backstage to be filmed and projected – in giant size – to the audience.
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The clothes themselves were not exceptional, but wearable with the puffer jackets big – to team with slim jeans – or a smaller zip-up with wider camouflage pants. The same print appeared on thigh-length high-heeled boots.
The story was in the blown-up images and the changing shapes. That meant huge tops (dare we say Vetements style?) and a giant, ankle length fur coat. There is no reason to ask what is so special about these clothes. It’s about Kanye as fashion king.
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Lacoste: Flying high
In the relative dearth of sportswear on the New York runways, French company Lacoste gave an effortless example of three important topics: ergonomics, fabric, and color.
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Designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista has an extraordinary ability to find a new morsel of Lacoste’s history to work on each season.
Who would have known that the tennis master René Lacoste, who created the sportswear brand with a crocodile symbol, would finish his career with a passion for aviation, contributing to the take off of Concorde and Airbus?
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That inspired the current designer to give a show of sportswear for both sexes. As they walked over an arid luna landscape in clothes that ranged from storm coats in vivid yellow (female), easy wrap coats in cloth or leather (male) and so many pieces in between, the designer picked up a myriad of ideas. Perhaps the most poetic was an artistic representation of space with iridescent prints depicting sun and moon from space artist Ron Miller.
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“It was a contrast between new materials and things that are a bit more earthy, like nylon patchwork with leather, and then washing it to treat the material,” said Baptista.
“In times like these, it is nice to look again into the future, try to give a positive twist and to put things forward,” the designer continued.
But for all the versatility of fabrics and their potential modernity, there is one exploration that the designer has not yet tried. The gender fusion, which is a major societal change of this millennium, might add heft to his collections.
