New York Fashion Week: At Marc Jacobs, a uniform that was anything but
A giant pink house front and center on the runway and Beats by Dre headphones at every seat. We were at a Marc Jacobs show all right, the fashion week finale we’d all been waiting for.
The soundtrack piped in through the headphones was a combination of instrumentals and a narrative. A robotic voice clued show goers into the choreography for the runway. “Tell this model to go here, and the one with the tattoo on her foot to go there.” That kind of a thing.
The effect was chilling—we were taking part in a group activity individually, like one of those silent dance parties. The headphones made it personal, intimate even.
I started thinking about John Cougar Mellencamp’s song “Pink Houses,” and the fading American dream. On the runway, the clothes were inspired by uniforms—olive drab work wear gone wild with candy button-like cabochons, lace, floral and overgrown patch pocket details. The footwear was orthopedic--Dr. Scholl’s-like sandals decorated with crystals and velvet.
Was Jacobs making a political statement? Or maybe a statement about the militant state of fashion? There was a note of melancholia. Here we were, closing out a week of going through the motions again.
But the message was whatever you wanted to make of it in your own head, using your own life narrative. It was a party of one.
The show keyed into an idea that has been swirling around the fashion ethos of late, namely the appeal of Normcore, or anonymous dressing, as a reaction against, or perhaps a protest of branding overload.
Jacobs showed uniforms that were anything but. Cropped jackets and A-line skirts, jumpsuits and cutout gowns, each with uniquely beautiful embellishments, united only by the drab color palette.
But in the end, it was all about fashion, the fabric that defines us and binds us.
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To view more stories on New York Fashion Week, visit latimes.com/fashion/fashionweek.
