All That Sparkles: Prabal Gurung, Vivienne Tam, Alexander Wang

The Swarovski sparkle continued on Saturday, albeit in both traditional and far more discreet ways than Jason Wu's crystal encrustations that have now incidentally popped up in more scattered formations in pieces from Suno and Diane von Furstenberg's collections.

Prabal Gurung has been getting a lot head nods from critics and it could just be my own messy tendancies in dress and my lack of imagination when it comes to eveningwear but his latest A/W 11-12 collection perhaps proved to be too far a walk into the land where floor sweeping dresses, swathes of fabric and the overuse of the word 'sumptuous' for scrappily styled me.  That said, it's the sort of thing that up close and in person, you can't deny make, quality and err… well its sumptuous qualities.  Backstage, I think I heard "fabulous" and "gorgeous" on a repeating word loop, which managed to surpass the positivity level norms at fashion shows.

All the fabness and gorgeousness sadly didn't translate onto my camera five rows back in the tents so I'm delving straight in to sparklesville, with the crystals being an ingredient to the Miss Havisham backstory of Prabal Gurung's collection.  Lost and fallen sparkle?  The eagerness to surround herself with physical luminosity to blind her from the pain of being jilted?  That might just be an overwrought thought but it makes sense in my head.  The collection was an all-compassing feat of super precise tailoring, knitwear and leather dresses but of course evening wear seems to be Gurung's forte and a few were calling out to the red carpet in a way that perhaps a lot of European counterparts don't tend to do.  Sarah Mower pointed out Gurung's pedigree as a grandiose American designer and where better to express grandiose than in the evening gown section where deets are coming at you from every angle…

The itty bitty details seen here involving what must have been painstaking embroidery and applique processes were what caught my eye but in an objectifying way, similar to how I would look at books of Christian Dior's New Look and feel that it was an untouchable sort of beauty.  Well, at least untouchable from the perspective of my grubby paws…

Wonder who was the poor soul who had to sew these wee bows and black crystals on this silk tulle top…

The sparkle here isn't Swarovski-derived but I love the effect of the patternation that makes some of the sequins look like rusting metal with unrusted pure silver shimmering through…

Seeing the Vivienne Tam show who is also on the Swarovski roster, has slotted very neatly into my whole Chinoserie Query that I'm still pondering even after my LONG-ASS post.  This would be the first time I've attended one of her shows and whilst secretly I've always harboured suspicions over her collections being slightly too literal, I was interested to see how she translates her chosen Kun opera costume theme to clothes that have a whiff of the theme without having the message pounded into me. 

Well it certainly glinted rather than sparkled in the dark with an abundance of black and metallic silver tones in the collection that were coupled with ornate detailing which I suppose in colour would have been too much…

… well until you get to this which combined with the pixelated lights that were beaming out from the back of the runway made this dress look like an Orient-themed LED board.  I couldn't figure out whether I loved or hated it but it certainly tapped into my magpie tendancies.  Tam was certainly enthusiastic with the Swarovski shimmer which in the context of translating Kunju operatic costumes (I would post pics but frankly the make-up scares the shit out of me…) into contemporary pieces works to some degree.  I far prefer an embedded integration of the crystals rather than the dotted scattered approach for instance which is probably why the piece below had me at a love/hate questioning…  

Then we come to big tamale.  And the bigness was emphasised upon me when I got in from JFK last week to find MAHUSSIVE billboards and taxi cab ads advertising Alexander Wang's first store opening.  The young designer bounding out at the end of his shows with a big grin on his face is in fashion kidulthood where Alexander Wang is brand first, person second – I suppose Industrie's forecast about who will be the next superbrand is coming to pass quicker than we thought. 

I immediately got the pastiche send-up of rich apres ski, wintry luxurious getups that very expensive looking Italians and Russians seem to wear ever so well (a tan and some shades combined with the thickest of furs and Moncler down jackets has always been an odd juxtaposition for me).  Fur trimmed sunnies also seem to have my name written all over them if they ever go into production.  The twists on the cliche though stemmed into a pretty bombastic selection of outerwear, the sort that you wouldn't mind wearing on its own, without the fear of your boring old coat covering up what's going on underneath.  I'm anticipating the exact aforementioned crowd of richies getting their mitts on this collection and it becoming one full circle of inspiration cliche subject wearing the parody object…

I particularly loved the oyster hued passage, a colour that is so ridonkculous when you have wet elements coming at you but I'm eager to try running the gamut of a day of potential coffee spills, pasta sauce, cooking olive oil and pen marks to see whether these hues stay clean…

What's a send-up of the super riche without a bit a shimmer?  Wang's use of Swarovski was again glinting rather than sparkling, using it as accents on tuxedo stripes and cut-away spats as well on shirt collars that caught the dramatic lighting that was used at the show.  I love that the texture of the crystals here is so fine, resembling something like galuchat/stingray skin rather than individual gems….

The clothes may have been mostly packed up by the time I made it backstage, but the shoes weren't… the marabou fluffy heel is the stay-at-home shoe that bored housewife/freelancers like myself are pining for…

On a slightly more practical level, I think the Trish loafer wedges that I own, have morphed and upgraded into these loafer heels that in rose-gold could be my second significant Alexander Wang purchase.  Damn.  Only two?  What sort of a fashion blogger am I, eh? 

*This is not an advertorial but support to see the shows has been provided by Swarovski.