Get Away From It All

From the digi-folking youngsters of the last post, we come to the pros that has really mastered the game of digi-patternation with their A/W 11-12 collection.  It really has been Proenza Schouler's year – from scooping the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year award to getting a recent investment boost from Andrew Rosen, with time squeezed in between to go to Capitol Hill to campaign for copyright laws to protect fashion designers.  This is my aptly timed seasonal ritual of meticulously going through a Proenza Schouler collection, one of a handful from New York Fashion Week that consistently impresses me from inspiration to conception to completion.  That's a hardly newsworthy statement.  I'm well aware that i'm merely joining the ever-growing flock of people to sing unanimous praise.

Still, I don't mind adding to that singing choir for Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez.  My HURRAH for them, comes complete with a chocker block amount of images taken at the show and showroom.  I'm not sure how a collection could be rooted and far away at the same time but that's exactly what they have achieved with this A/W 11-12 collection.  On one hand we flee far away, as McCollough and Hernandez were inspired by a road trip to Santa Fe, setting off a cliched dream that pretty much everyone harbours for an open top drive, dust blowing through the wind and a stereo blasting out Tom Petty (maybe the last bit is just for me…).  

The idea of getting away from it all is so ingrained into this collection that afterwards, I kept saving images of expanses of landscape that seemed to go on for infinity.  Alec Soth's image from his series of documenting people who live in the American wilderness, cut off from civilisation seems especially appropriate.  

Then on the other hand, from distant and dramatic escapes, they grapple with earthier elements, aided by motifs derived from Native American blankets, something which my arse has been getting mighty familiar with for the last year or so, since a Levi's x Pendleton blanket turned up on my doorstep.  

As seen in the latest ad campaign images shot again by Willy Vanderperre, it's hard to accuse Proenza Schouler of cultural borrowing since the prints derived from those blanket patterns have become so pixelated and abstracted beyond recognition.  Digi-folk?  Digi-native?  Digi-trad?  Whatever it is, Proenza Schouler have been honing in on it for the last few collections (pre-fall, this collection and the latest resort outing) and they seem well at home with warping the traditional. 

From last season's delicate shibori and acid-dripped lace, we get something 'heartier' this time round.  I know I sound like I'm describing a beef stew, but honestly, in person, there is something quite robust about these bits of cut-out work that adds another layer of abstraction and pixelation to the already squared up pattern.  

A lot of people lauded these bias-cut dresses, with visible open stitches holding together one single piece of fabric as a technical feat, and rightly so.  In a collection that was so full of dense patternation and rich with textures these simpler shift dresses definitely fulfill a gap.  The simplicity of line as well as the skill of cutting is really evident when you give the dress a 360 degree twirl…

Nicole Phelps of Style.com quite rightly pointed out Proenza Schouler's increasing pre-occupation with craft, something that has really been honed in recent years.  Just yesterday Vanessa Friedman pondered what exactly was the 'American Luxury' that Andrew Rosen was referring to when describing Proenza Schouler and she talked about their processes of creation and production.  For me though, it's their treatment of familiar American past-times and geography – from California surf chicks to schoolgirls on basketballs and now to Santa Fe wanderers – coupled with the pushing of boundaries in craft and fabrication techniques, that give them a unique vantage point of view in carving out their own type of 'American Luxury'.  That they also possess the more conventional 'American' trait of being able to get product out and diffuse and democratise when required, is a background bonus.  

Going back to craft, nothing feels more distinctly 'crafty' than in these macrame skirts and shoes, a move on from the hiking ropes and karibiners of their previous collection.   

Where the collection feels particularly grounded is in these layered ensembles where fold over skirts slouch over trousers and jumpers scrunch up in all the right places.  With the abundance of black mixed in with the colours, there's an altogether 'weightier' feeling to the patterns, something that isn't to be trifled with.   

The stripe blanket print is particularly effective in this dress that is neatly folded and tucked at the front to give volume that isn't at all gratuitous.  Generally speaking, I love the way the shapes in the collection are spliced and diced so that dresses and skirts fall assymetrically….

With so many deets-heavy daywear options, you'd be tempted to slouch about all day, every day in Proenza Schouler's rich mix patterns.  It isn't the first time the boys have ended with a velvet outing but here once again, they call upon panne velvet painted in patterns on silk so that they aren't so heavy (they look particularly delicate when suspended with chain straps).  Or else, they go for an unapologetic bolshy assault of pattern on the velvet.  Here colours are released from their mattified state and lively dance across the dresses as the natural property of velvet adds shimmer to the blues, aquamarines, burnished oranges, yellow and greens.

I don't really like ending on the note of "Hey y'all – this is a bag!  Isn't it pretty?  Don't you want to buy it?".  I'll leave that to the better equipped peeps at Bag Snob.  However, as this post is in the spirit of ritual, once again I can't of course NOT swoon about the PS11.  It's my one bag vice to lament the fact i can't afford it every season.  I couldn't give a fig about Cherry, Kelly or Nelly or whatever other cutesy names other bags seem to be christened with.  For me it's all about the sheeny shiny leather, a neat hand strap, a feisty metal grill and two pyramid fixtures that together look like there's a face on the bag – it's saying something to me.  "Oi!  You!  Woman Up and Come and Get Me!"