Trip Up the Light

It's taken a while and whilst Anthony Vaccarello has had a few notable write-ups (Vogue.com y'all!) I'm not going to miss out on the pie – one that will get hotter as time goes by no doubt.  Oh dear, I'm starting this all wrong… hot pies? 

In actual fact, pies are probably something that women may want to keep away from if they want to touch this S/S 11 collection.  I mean that in the best possible way because as per what I have said a number of times about Anthony's work is that he dares to go to an ultra sensual region, where it's still stimulating in other ways too – a trick that is harder to pull off when super short lengths, body conscious fits and scantily clad cuts are involved. 

All this talk of a more minimal, more demure style of dress for 'real' women has made me wonder who is this mystical 'real' woman?  What exactly defines her as 'real' and in relation to this collection, does that mean that the clothes here are not in existence, only fit for women who are 'unreal'.  That said, 'unreal' would be the word to describe how he has constructed some of the dresses where metal internal boning holds drapes into shape and cut-outs that strike like thunder onto the decollete, the hips and on the sides of breasts in a gravity defying feat.  There's no denying the sex factor with his clothes but then again, there's no shame in celebrating it either when empowerment is in force.  There's being submissive and deshabille in an overtly obvious way and there's holding the ball in your court, and to put it in a blunt cliche… 'owning' these barely there dresses and bathing suits (and a sole bolero jacket that in addiition to the grey jersey controlled toga dress WILL be mine) and revelling in their effect on other people. 

Praying myself into a dress, once seen like some sort of banal conformity to being female is here something I'd do if I wasn't such a boring atheist.  Whilst it might seem like a betrayal to the circle of womenkind I'm supposedly part of, I'm actually itching to give it a bash.  I'll quite enjoy the giddiness of hoiking my wad into his pieces, of sucking in my tum tum and revelling in sensuality for once.  Perhaps I say all of this rubbish about being anti-sexy  as a ruse to what in fact is a secret desire to inhabit pieces like these, regardless of whether Anthony made them or not.   Nonetheless with a collection that steps his signature up to a level where you get all fanatical about squeezing into dresses, in amidst a looser silhouette that is pervading everywhere else, I guess what I'm saying is that simplicity and conformity aren't options for Anthony, especially in an unforgiving Paris Fashion Week schedule that has only started to get injected with new blood.

I'm naturally over-zealous in my rapture but perhaps this time I have an excuse – a trippy light installation filtered over the models (including Irina Lazareanu and Luca Gadjus!! – those exclamation marks are for modelisers – sadly I can never join in the fun of that…) must have gone to my head and sent a sublimnal message "You must like this, You must like this…".

On second thoughts, I'm through with apologising for my biased support.  A recommendation from US Vogue pretty much says it all – that it's only a matter of WHEN he'll grow big and also perhaps WHEN I'll start getting all teary-eyed over his success.       

All photography above by Max von Gumppenberg and Patrick Bienert

(Three more images by Morgan O'Donovan for Dazed Digital)

A closer look at the tropics antics that went on in this raised devore on the elastic and an embroidered print to play with opaque and sheer as well as the extent of colour that went down…