Lust never sleeps. The title Walter Van Beirendonck [1] gave his new
show acknowledged the durability of our baser instincts. The clothes
he made to accompany that acknowledgement won't be matched on any
other catwalk this season. Their combination of cartoonish joie de
vivre and deeply sinister subtext was unsettling, a reaction that WVB
has effortlessly courted throughout his career, as anyone who had the
pleasure of seeing his recent career retrospective in Antwerp will
know.
The collection was based around a literal face-off between masks: the
kind that warriors in Papua, New Guinea, or voodoo high priests in the
Caribbean paint on, and the leather kind that Western fetishists wear
in big-city sex clubs. Van Beirendonck's standard cast of African
models wore these masks, most of them in an Elastoplast pink that was
like a parody of Caucasian skin. He insisted that was simply because
he liked the contrast, but the effect was profoundly disturbing.
And maybe it's just because Van Beirendonck makes you think such
thoughts, but it was hard to resist the idea that his sleekly
civilized tailored suits were also a mask for a whole repertoire of
beastly impulses. Lust never sleeps, remember. The designer certainly
was full-on with his fetish references---not just the masks, but
full-body leather waders, fluffy mohairs, and pointy little details
such as the black rubber padlock around one model's neck or the tiny
tufts of fur that defined the fingernails on a candy-colored leather
body glove. One set of waders, in leaf green leather, was worn over a
jacket, shirt, and bow tie that matched. This outfit seemed
particularly worthy of a psycho/sociological fashion analysis for the
way in which propriety was restrained. The fact that it was all in
cartoony colors hardly diminished its force. In fact, it simply
highlighted the fact that the collection was a natural heir to
Vivienne Westwood's SEX shop or Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange,
two other instances of cartoon antics masking a lethal assault on the
everyday. Stepping outside the Espace Commines into a drizzly Saturday
morning, it was instantly, sadly obvious that the everyday will never,
ever know what had hit it.
---Tim Blanks
Link:
Walter Van Beirendonck
Links:
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[1] http://www.style.com/fashionshows/designerdirectory/WVB/seasons/
http://www.textileglobal.com/2012/01/walter-van-beirendonck.html
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