Looking Ahead by Looking Back

March 11th 2010 marked the last day of the A/W 10-11 fashion season when a spotty, ill and mussy haired me came crawling back on the Eurostar with a battered suitcase between the legs, at which point if you had asked me what my show highlight had been, I would have grunted something like "Huh?  Wha?  Errr…. must. have. water."  Three weeks have past and I've regained a smidgen of coherency as well as some ability to recall shows.

So when I had a meticulous, fine tooth combing through the devastatingly well-selected Vagabond NYC site, things started coming back and with the brain in close proximity to water and bread (you'd be surprised how man's bare necessities escape you during fashion week…), I could finally start to draw lines between Vagabond's vintage pieces and the trend strands of A/W 10-11.  Not that it's all that difficult given that Vagabond NYC's eye is trained and geared towards linking pieces of the past to contemporary fashion ("Our buy is edited to reflect our understanding of contemporary fashion's indebtedness to the past.").  That they are one step ahead and have already started buying in pieces to look ahead to A/W 10-11 might actually place them even slightly ahead of the fast fashion high street train which just throws a whole irony loop over the supposed 'slow' nature of 'designer vintage' (I guess I'll very sloooowly be saving up for some of these pieces…).

And so the recall begins… where is that glass of water again?

80s Black Leather Dress // Christopher Kane A/W 10-11

Rochas A/W 10-11 // Halston Peach Garden Coat

Givenchy A/W 10-11 fold-down skirt // Hanemori Black Pleated Wrap Piece

Vivienne Westwood Liberty Floral Orb Jacket // John Galliano A/W 10-11

Miu Miu A/W 10-11 relief patterns // Gertrude's of Gold 60s pink embroidered and jewelled dress

Jean Paul Gaultier multi-way khaki dress // Dries Van Noten A/W 10-11

Chanel A/E 10-11 frayed rainbow tweed jacket // 80s Confetti Mohair Knit Jacket

60s Mod Tikitiner double breasted jacket // Chloe A/W 10-11

Balenciaga A/W 10-11 wordplay // Moschino 'Green Nature' printed skirt suit

(Image of Christopher Kane by Kasia Bobula, images of Rochas, John Galliano, Chloe and Dries Van Noten by Morgan O'Donovan all for Dazed Digital, rest of catwalk images from Style.com)