| TIM BLANKS TALKS About the power of fashion transformation |
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Reason? Am I mad? Fashion needs no reason when it has a success story like Ford’s to incentivize dozens of moribund labels to follow suit. All that’s really required is blind faith, a few billion dollars and the attention span of a mayfly on the part of company and clients alike. Without that complicity, reinvention would be impossible. Look at the original Halston, for example. Roy Halston Frowick, the milliner from Iowa, was able to transform himself into Manhattan’s absolute arbiter of glamour with nary a backward glance at his origins. Actually, in that respect, fashion and the movies are very similar. They’re both dream factories, where the small and the ordinary can be transmogrified into something splendiferous; Norma Jeane Baker became Marilyn Monroe, Laura Hollins turns into Agyness Deyn. That is one reason why I happily attend fashion shows season after season. You’re always wishing, hoping and praying for the catwalk equivalent of the Oscar-winning transformation. Sometimes, it will be a name that’s new to the scene, but I’ve often found I was more engaged when one of the warhorses pulled a rabbit out of a hat: Valen-tino (late and lamented, in his professional capacity at least) or Oscar de la Renta or Lauren or Lagerfeld or Ar-mani. This season, all of them offered opportunities to watch a rise to the challenge of the new, return to the well, remind themselves why they love what they do. By doing that, they’ve reminded us how a little metamorphosis can go a long way.
Read last month’s column by Tim Blanks > EDITOR: Elio Iannacci |
