Positively Ballardian – Style Bubble

I’ve been thinking about the word “millennial” a lot when it comes to young designers. Which is just a snazzier way of labelling a new generation of designers, who are under thirty. In the latest issue of the New Yorker, writer John Colapinto profiles Olivier Rousteing and his Instagram antics. He’s the sort of millennial designer that has embrced everything that social media has to offer in order to build both his own profile and that of a historic French house. In an interesting conversation between Rousteing and Txampi Diz, Senior Vice President Managing Director of KCD Paris and Balmain’s public relations director, they talk about the importance of a celebrity or a fashion critic and which matters more. “There is room for both,” argues Dix. Rousteing opts for the former, terming their mass following as the #BalmainArmy, whose reactions, likes and verdicts ultimately matter more.

It’s interesting then to compare Rousteing’s millennial approach to some of London’s younger designers, who are already tiring of modern life and seeing the end game of what technology offers us more as a dystopia rather than a utopia. Nostalgia is the wrong word. It feels more like a reflection of their current environment and that their collections are therefore more like visceral reactions. Claire Barrow‘s collection “Broken Machines” was an ode to this very Ballardian vision. A generation of tech-reliant souls trying to made themselves heard in a din of dissonant saxophone and piano. Their only sane armour were their clothes, painted with Barrow’s signature dystopian illustrations. Her painterly brushstrokes as always express something more significant than mere surface decoration. The silhouettes range from formal tailored outerwear to flimsy silk evening dresses to leather pieces that leave certain models in a state of uneasy undress. And together with a cast of street casted creatives and artists that are in Barrow’s personal circle of friends, that image of a rebellious generation, trying hard to break free from the shackles of technology, feels all the more convincing.

Whilst not Ballardian in the strictest sense, Molly Goddard‘s latest presentation was decidedly bleak and deliberately sterile. She’s rebuffing that Insta-bait by deviating from the “cuteness” of her previous mise-en-scenes of life drawing classes and prom parties as she once again had a cast of familiar friends stand in an assembly line in a white vinyl-coated hospital environment, making the dullest of sandwiches, with that familiar stench of chorleywood loaf hanging heavy in the air. The surroundings and facial expressions may have been blank but the clothes were anything but. Bright lettuce green (the fresh kind, as opposed to limp) tulle contrasted with Goddard’s tried and tested palette of dusky pink and grey. Likewise, tartan and scarlet red cotton counterbalanced with canvas-esque cream. The ties at the backs gave some of the dresses a hospital gown vibe, saved by the intricate layers of smocking, ruching and added floral embroidery that still meant Goddard’s dresses would brighten the rainiest of British summers. There was a danger Goddard could have gone down a very twee and quintessentially English on-theme presentation but the jarring contrasts between the harshly lit white space, the weird uniformity of the sarnies and the ornateness of the clothes made this presentation yet another stand out at London Fashion Week.