ALL DOLLED UP

The Chanel Spring 2016 couture show was formally rigorous: a parade of 120 suits and gowns executed in muted gold tones with jewel-like embellishments. The outfits were unified in their quiet opulence, and in their allegiance to the classic Chanel silhouette: a slim bottom with a top cut away at the neck and the waist. The models sported identical low rolled buns, high curved-heel wedges, and Cleopatra eyeliner, a look that was part Dovima and part Princess Leia.

But the fashion was upstaged by the scenery. The show’s stated theme was ecology and it was presented inside the Gran Palais on a set with lawns, trees, a three-story wood cabana, and blank blue backdrops standing for cloudless sky. The cabana’s unadorned wood slat construction felt vaguely “ecological” and very, very modern. Its tidy construction sat in perfect contrast to the majestic arching steel ribs of the building above.

Models emerged from the cabana one by one and circled the lawn in a stoned robotic shuffle. The fringes, beading and brooches on their dresses bobbed like wings and antennae. Mica Arganaraz paraded solo, at the end, in a fitted bridal gown and hoodie encrusted with white beads. She skimmed the walkways, slowed by the the heavy train of the dress, like a swan.

For the finale all sixty models gathered inside the cabana as its front panels folded and flipped open, simultaneously, slowly, like so many suburban garage doors. The spectacular doll-house view revealed all the young women in their evening clothes, at once. As they searched the crowd blankly and accepted the applause they looked less like dolls, or like young women, than like the most exquisite, exotic animals.

Photo: Courtesy of Fashion to Max

February 07, 2016 by Nalina Moses

Most media commemorations of the fifty year anniversary of the Kennedy assassination were ripe with sentimentality. Cathy Horyn’s essay in the Times about the skirt suit Jacqueline Kennedy was wearing that day stood out because it was both dispassionate and poignant. Why is the suit such a brilliant icon? Photos of the striped button-down JPress shirt the president was wearing when he died have been published repeatedly. It’s a gruesome artifact, caked with blood and clipped neatly where the bullet entered and exited his chest. But this garment lacks the mythological charge, both the glamor and the horror, of the First Lady’s pink wool boucle suit. In the iconic black and white AP photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One, we see see her only from the side and only from the waist up. But we know that she’s wearing bubble gum pink, and that the front of her skirt is stained with blood.

Much is made about Jackie’s White House fashions, but what she wore was conventional, not so different from what other women of her station were wearing. The pink suit isn’t even a real Chanel, but an authorized knock-off from a Park Avenue dress shop called Chez Ninon. Perhaps Mrs. Kennedy’s conservatism is what’s most remarkable about her presence in photographs of the assassination; she dresses and behaves absolutely appropriately right through the tragedy. It’s as if her style is guided by a deep unchanging sense of order, and that this is what holds her together. Mrs. Kennedy never cleaned the suit. Eight months after the assassination she had it sent, along with her shirt, stockings and handbag, to the National Archives in Potomac. The items are still there today, sealed in an airtight container, available only to researchers. At the request of her daughter Caroline Kennedy the suit won’t be displayed publicly until 2103. Besides being tasteless, a bit of assassination porn, showing it isn’t necessary. We all already know it.

December 10, 2013 by Nalina Moses