Fashion Criticism by Granata Francesca;

Author:Granata, Francesca;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

23

Coming Apart

Amy Spindler

The New York Times, July 25, 1993

The wire hanger was vibrating like a sewing machine in the trembling hand of Hans Schreiber. Dancing joltingly from it was a pearly transparent dress with swatches of fabric sewn to it like so many wads of cotton on shaving cuts.

After four years of studying cut, draping, anatomy, drawing, marketing and design at one of Europe’s most prestigious fashion schools, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, Mr. Schreiber was presenting his pieces to a jury last month. The judges included Jean-Paul Gaultier, France’s leading avant-garde designer, who is credited with discovering the academy’s most notorious graduate, Martin Margiela. Mr. Margiela is the reluctant leader of a revolutionary movement in fashion, deconstructionism, that has permeated everything from haute couture to street dressing.

The jury had not gathered only to see the work of Mr. Schreiber and his classmates. In the same building, there was a retrospective of 30 years of fashion design from graduates of the academy. Archives lie along the log-planked floors of the warehouse chosen for the show, a dank building with stone stairwells and iron pillars.

Fittingly, it looks like a place where fashion might crawl to die.

The academy was the training ground for deconstructionism—the end of fashion as we know it—and three of its graduates, Mr. Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester and Dries van Noten, were the star pupils. Mr. Margiela graduated first, in 1980, followed the next year by Ms. Demeulemeester and Mr. van Noten. Their subsequent successes ruptured the close-knit cabal of the fashion establishment in Paris, shoving Antwerp—and the academy—into the forefront.

Deconstructionist designs, with their unfinished seams and practiced plainness, were initially considered antifashion, a satire of couture values.

They’re a bit more complicated than that.

Antwerp’s fledgling designers would scurry to Paris during runway seasons, begging, borrowing and copying invitations to get into the shows and see what the future held for them. They witnessed the emergence of Mr. Gaultier and the rise of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.

And they saw every excess of the ’80s played out on runways and in the streets of Paris. The power suits. The gold buttons. The designer logos plastered on everything. The whole haute couture opera, with Brunnhilde trussed up in embroidery, clacking beads and drapery velvet. And the international press, running around with thesauruses to find one more word synonymous with gilt.

A satire would have been redundant. If that was the future of fashion, few of the academy group wanted it.

As a backlash against established 80s excesses—and tempered by the influence of Mr. Gaultier and the Japanese designers—a new style was born. It was one that offered a sort of asbestos suit against the bonfire of the vanities.

Still, it owed much of its success to a decidedly 80s phenomenon: marketing. The Antwerp designers emerged when the Belgium Government wanted to push its fashion industry and helped finance showings of the school’s work in places like Brussels, Paris, Tokyo and London.

Without abandoning any of their rigorous training, the three young designers set about creating clothes that would not overwhelm the wearer.

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