It’s is not the first time i write about the phenomenon Mash-ups. And i’m not the only one. Yesterday, Suzy Menkes of the New York Times called the S/S 2011 collection of Marc Jacobs ‘Marc Jacobs: Finding Beauty in Cut and Paste’ . After the influence of the Mad Man’s and the Single Man’s Marc Jacobs left the sixties behind hem and went to the big 1970s. Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche. Sonia Rykiel. A more Hippie Deluxe or Paris left bank bohemian-dandy style is the next thing in fashion.
And personally I have something more in the nineteen-seventies, I was born in 1973 and remember the pictures from my infancy too well. In a black tight turtleneck on the brown corduroy couch with a bright red table lighter in my mouth, my mother as a perfect host for her guests in purple, bright yellow, red, black and absolute green. The cozy seventies, cigarettes, sherry and old port, snacks and conversation pits, very social.
Back to Menkes report on Jacobs S/S 2011 collection. ‘There must have been a visit to the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective in Paris — the first of many — to catch the flavor of the hippie deluxe era, with peasant blouses and lush satin skirts and narrow trench coats worn with wide-brimmed hats. And at the show he would have studied the painterly shades of 20th-century fashion’s greatest colorist, who reveled in the mixes of papal purple and Moroccan spice, sunset pinks and sun-ray yellow that appeared with such dash and clash on Mr. Jacobs’s runway.’ And she linked on to the 1970s fashion exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs as well.
Beside this ‘zeitgeist’ expressions, it’s a strange move from Marc Jacobs, Menkes assumed. ‘Mr. Jacobs was unrepentant about such obvious references to fashion’s past’ … or ..’he who insists on his own creativity has no memory’ said the designer once. But ‘.. a youthful audience seeing long peasant skirts for the first time couldn’t possibly connect a whoosh of fabric at the shoulder of a brief dress to the YSL interpretation of Georges Braque’s birds. The real problem with fashion’s version of cut-and-paste is that it lacks the deep emotion that comes with firsthand inspiration’, but ‘the freshness appeared in the choice of fabrics, as soft, flowing silk and chiffon were followed by tactile, knobbly cloqué and by shiny satin. The pieces, with a whiff of past and present, added up to an appealing collection. And, as ever with Mr. Jacobs, the show touched a fashion nerve, as hemlines drop and the recession-era 1970s holds up a mirror to present times.’
That’s a snappy approach of looking back in times and the cut-and-paste or mash-up trend. And if Menkes approach is right, i look forward to the next after-recession years with new fabrics as a starting point.
