Comme des Garcons Fall 2004/05 collection was themed 'Dark Romance Witch'.
It expressed the power of witches, their independence and free spirit, which Rei Kawakubo thought was best expressed by the colour black. (A head-to-toe colour palette which made her famous/infamous (?) when she first presented in Paris in the early 80s.)
RK's concept for the collection was "A strong woman is the starting point...So I thought 'witches' in the sense of a woman having power. The original witches were benevolent but because people didn't understand them they bullied them."
She also said, "What interests me with witches is the way they have always resisted the current order. Because they were different in their way of thinking and acting, they were persecuted, hunted, excluded by society."
The collection also returned to concepts RK had worked with previously, and many a time since, Victorian and Edwardian eras, and the boundaries between masculine and feminine.
A very cool fashion shoot from 'Purple' magazine (I think) delivered that boundary crossing. "Obscure Alternatives The new Comme des Garcons' womenswear looks just as achingly beautiful on boys."
Photography, Willy Vanderperre.
Regard the Victorian/Edwardian reference mentioned, the images below relate to The Met Museum 2020 exhibition, 'About Time: Fashion and Duration'.
Outfits were organised in pairs, juxtaposing historical womenswear with a contemporary one, which highlighted a similarity in silhouette and detail.
An outfit dated 1895 and a CdG Fall 2004/05 collection garment are very cool together.
I included a video relating to the exhibition in my SLTSLTB Virginia Woolf blog. Take this link and scroll way down to the video 'About Time: Fashion a...'
I like Lizzie Lo's recreating the CdG Fall 2004/05 look. She knows her makeup and I love how she does her hair.
My garment inspired by the CdG Fall 2004/05 collection. It is one of my first SLTSLTBoys creation. Made during summer, northern hemisphere summer 2004, on the dining table of the house where I was living in Finsbury Park, London, and I still love wearing it!
I have a wee 'mini mannequin' project going with my Yr.8 Fab.Tech. class, and 2 students produced this, which they themed 'Dark Romance'. There's something about the cross that just sets it off.
Witches.
A witch is someone who practises witchcraft, the use of supernatural power to harm others. The term originated in medieval and early modern Europe.
European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. (European belief in witchcraft dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment, late 17th and 18th centuries.)
The women most often accused of witchery were frequently elderly, poor, widowed or childless, women who were atypical of society's norms.
A brief history of Witches via youtube.
And for the book minded among us, Literary Hub has a good section, describing a wonderful history of witches found in literature.
Alexander McQueen's Fall 2007 Ready-To-Wear collection was a personal affair. McQueen's mother, who traced family trees, had discovered that her bloodline lead back to a victim of the Salem witch trials. The ancestor was Elizabeth Howe, one of the first victims to be hanged for being a witch.
For a brief history concerning the Salem witch trials, take this site. I found this section very interesting, "In 1711, colonial authorities pardoned some of the accused and compensated their families. But it was only in July 2022, that Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last convicted Salem "witch', whose name had yet to be cleared, was officially exonerated."
Here's a neat video relating to McQueen's exhibition, showing runway, backstage and front-row footage.
(One comment Sarah Mower made concerning the collection presentation was, "... overwrought show that only succeeded in ramming home the realization that the theatrics and stadium-sized presentations of the 90s are - or rather should be - a thing of the past.")
McQueen's collection also features in the Peabody Essex Museum's 2021-2022 exhibition, 'The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming'. This museum is situated at 161 Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts, so it is the home of original documentation relating to the trials. There is a heap of good reading in this site, particularly poignant being the examination of Elizabeth Howe's transcript. https://www.pem.org/exhibitions/the-salem-witch-trials-reckoning-and-reclaiming
On the 22nd of January, 1953, Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible', a dramatised and partially fictionalised story of the Salem witch trials, was performed for the first time.
I have read that the three main symbols of the play are the fire in the crucible, the poppet and the witch hunt. The poppet, a child's toy, is discovered by Ezekiel Cheever and used as proof that witchcraft was used by Elizabeth Proctor to harm people. When the senior drama class performed the play a number of years ago, the teacher asked if anyone had "a poppet". I produced this for the production. I think it served its purpose very well.
View a very good 1981 BBC TV production of the play, directed by Don Taylor. It is all interior scenes, with the sense of not-yet-electricity-for-lighting, and a design set which presents that enviroment of what was a late Tudor era.
Witch Hunts, as this video acknowledges are so very ugly.
We don't have to go very far to experience such an ugliness in Aotearoa/New Zealand!
A quote from the above "A passage in which Hood compares the tone and framing of child psychologist Miriam Saphira's baseless assertions regarding the prevalence of child sexual abuse in New Zealand to passages drawn from fifteenth-century witchcraft treatise Malleus Maleficarum is breathtaking for its appropriateness."
This is one of the beginning images from McQueen's 'In Memory of Elizabeth Howe' collection show. Could it be a connection to The Three Witches?
The Three Witches, aka The Weird Sisters or Wayward Sisters, are from Macbeth.
It is considered that they bear a striking resemblance to the Three Fates or The Moirae, of classical mythology.
Clotho (Spinner), Lachesis (Alloter) and Atropos (Inflexible).
Clotho spun the thread of human fate, Lachesis dispensed it, and Atropos cut the thread, which determined the individual's moment of death.
Henry Moore's 'The Three Fates'.
This is an interesting compare and contrast of the Three Witches opening scenes from five adaptations of Macbeth,
but this performance, by Kathryn Hunter from Joel Coen's 2021 production, is astounding.
Hunter plays all three like she is possessed by the other two, plus, there is an element of crows, and she is a woman living on a battlefield, where the crows are her only company.
Rei Kawakubo revisited Witches in the Comme des Garcons S/S 2016 collection, this time 'Blue Witches'.
Again, she said "Powerful women who are misunderstood, but do good in the world."
Many in the industry regarded Kawakubo as such a woman, "with magical powers who they hold in awe."
Much of this collection was crafted in faux fur, from astrakhan to leopard. The original swatches of the faux fur, sourched in a Spanish factory specialising in the fabric, happened to be blue, which Rei Kawakubo fell in love with.
Once she was aware of the blue fabric, RK said she started thinking about 'Blue Velvet', David Lynch's 1986 neo-noir mystery thriller film, starring Isabella Rossellini.
(A cool aside...isn't this a great shot of Lynch and Rossellini, taken by Annie Leibovitz.)
Blue Velvet has been described as a "surrealist masterpiece".
These are the shoes from the CdG SS Blue Witches collection
Aren't they glorious! I don't know if you remember someone from the McQueen backstage video mentioning the shoes "Witchy shoes, pointy, very high, quite black." Okay, Rei's aren't high, but otherwise, spot on..witchy shoes!
Just like...
This is the wonderfully creative Julien d'Ys, who designed/devised the fabulous headwear for the Blue Witches collection.
A link, which will take you into his glorious sketchbook for the collection, plus an explanation of his working relationship with Rei Kawakubo. They have a great working connection.
And the day I put it together, I was wearing an ensemble connecting with the CdG collection. It's not very clear, but the skirt has a blue and black pattern with a cool ribbon & lace hem section. The black cardigan has puffed sleeves in a knitted lace. The whole look is finished off by my lovely black 'witchy' Italian boots.
Fun and expression through clothing.
Just including this shot to show the blue with a black print, and the bottom edge lace. Whenever I wear this skirt, it always gets a compliment, and it really is an oldie!
This blog has inspired my 3rd 'Redress the Past' project. (Found on my SewRound website, see the side bar)
And I am just going to finish off with these lovely little images from the Dark Romance Witch collection, sketched so beautifully by someone, cut out by me, glued on to card, to become, sort of, paper doll like.
SLTSLTBsigning off.
Wednesday 2 November 2022
Comme des Garcons Fall 2001 collection, 'Beyond Taboo', was one in which, Rei Kawakubo "tackled sex, and the material manifestation of erotica - in all its corseted, cone-bra'd, satin and lace glory." (Laird Borrelli-Persson)
I love this collection. The wonderful reworking of corsets, bustiers and bras. Turning underwear into very cool outerwear.
The humble slip....
provided wonderful inspiration,
even reflected in a coat.
The jackets from the collection...
inspired this jacket for me.
This was a skirt that was influenced by the collection. It's not a good photo for clarity, but the front opening is by a hook and eye tape, top stitching resembles boning channels, and a side layer of lingerie mesh and lace to reflect a slip/petticoat, aspects of underwear becoming outerwear.
And, of course I was inspired by the corset bustiers!
One of the glorious corset tops from the CdG collection, seen from a variety of angles Isn't it a fascinating garment.
'Taboo' as a noun: A social or religious custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place or thing.
'Taboo' as an adjective: Prohibited or restricted by social custom.
Taboo, whether noun or adjective, is often based in a cultural sensibility, relating to customs and/or religion.
The English use of 'Taboo' is dated to 1777, when Captain James Cook visited Tonga. He referred to the Tongans' use of the word 'Tabu' in a journal entry, "has a very comprehensive meaning; but, in general, signifies that a thing is forbidden...when any thing is forbidden to be eat, or made use of, they say, that it is taboo."
Common taboos involve restrictions of: killing and hunting; sex and sexual relationships; reproduction; the dead; food and dining.
Human sacrifice and cannibalism would be considered extremely taboo in a contemporary western society, yet such activities were once a strong aspect of society norms in early post-European contact Tonga, Tahiti and Aotearoa/New Zealand.
By the time European contact began with Tonga, rituals of sacrifice were performed to honour various gods, whereas in Tahiti (Otaheite) sacrificial rituals had become oriented towards one particular god, 'Oro, the god of war.
I imagine that the ritual of sacrifice came across as a powerful tool of authority.
I believe Captain Cook witnessed a human sacrifice on the island of Tahiti (Otaheite), on the 1st of September, 1777. Maybe he would have a completely different reaction to such an event as myself, due to the fact that his society back home, were still into public executions....but who knows.
Discussing rituals of sacrifice in the Pacific brings me to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau,
the German film director, producer and screenwriter. Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, is one of Murnau's acclaimed works.
In 1931 he travelled to Bora-Bora
to make the film 'Tabu'.
Murnau started filming with film pioneer Robert J. Flaherty, but Flaherty left the production after various disputes between the two of them.
Sadly, Murnau died of injuries he sustained in a car accident, one week before the public opening of the film.
If interested to know more details about the film, check this site,
According to Charles Silver, a former Curator in the Dept. of Film at MoMA, "Murnau, after the relative imprisonment of Weimar Berlin and mad Hollywood, loved Tahiti, Bora-Bora, and the smaller islands. The informality and laxity of strictures on behaviour (including sexual ones) seemed a kind of rebirth....Tabu is a great treasure to the lovers of cinema. Its haunting imagery is intrinsically lovely, its rhythms unique, its denouement overwhelming."
There is a story that when filming one section of Tabu, Murnau moved a sacred rock to get a better camera placement.
If you would like to view the film, here's the video. It is a tender love story,and the ending scene is very moving, both beautiful and sad. Remember it is a silent film and the soundtrack is pivotal.
This screen shot explains the general premise of the story.
Rei Kawakubo revisited bras as outerwear in the CdG Fall 2008, 'Bad Taste' collection.
She wasn't the first designer to have ever done so.
Vivienne Westwood & Malcolm McLaren's Fall 1982/83, 'Nostalgia of Mud/Buffalo Girls' collection, according to the V&A, was the first collection "to introduce underwear as outerwear, with 1950s-style satin bras worn over dresses."
I worked with the concept in a collection I put together a number of years ago. Bra made from felt and fastened with chunky buckles. I didn't think it would catch on, but I sure enjoyed the creativity that was involved in producing it! Does the look seem a bit 'Stepford Housewives Just Want To Break Free!'
From the same collection, a corset look built into a shirt, which is quite wearable.
American designer Dion Lee brought a skillful design approach to "bra on the outer" concept, in his Fall 2018 collection.
Rick Owen's Fall 2015 collections was described as "Designer Breaks Last Taboo in Male Fashion, Full Frontal Nudity". Owens said "Boys with their dicks out is such a simple, primal, childish gesture", but he did it anyway, by way of a porthole over the groin area. I guess if you were sitting there in the audience, you might get a flopping eyeful!
Six years later, Owens Fall 2021 collection was described in a GQ article, "Rick Owens Takes On Fashion's Last Taboo: Male Aggression." Owens said of his collection, it was an exploration of male suppressed rage on every side of the moral divide. "I'm always conscious of my own aggression....Aggression is something that I'm fascinated with because I'm constantly conscious of wrestling with it, personally. And I think that's true of every man."
What do you think?
YFront aggro?
And I can still see that porthole look....
Latex rubber clothing was once something secretive, shocking, and described as "the most sensual fabric there is due to its unique look, sound, smell, feel and taste."
An interesting paragraph from the article relating to the Mackintosh raincoat
"The invention of the Mackintosh raincoat in 1824 spawned a particularly loyal community of rubber lovers, whose letters of enthusiasm about the erotic “thrill of macking” (fetish slang for wearing the garment) were published in the periodical London Life as early as the 1920s. The devoted convened to found The Mackintosh Society, one of England’s first modern fetish organisations. As membership in these circles grew and word of its ‘perverse’ uses spread, rubberwear’s societal subtext became increasingly taboo. After World War Two, a wave of social conservatism forced fetishists underground."
Five years ago I wrote a blog on the theme of raincoat/trenchcoat, which included information about the history of the Burberry trenchcoat. I remember there was a cool wee video about Thomas Burberry's textile invention.
And here's the Billy Idol 'White Wedding' music video mentioned in 'The Rise of Latex' article. It might take you back.
Leigh Bowery, who I have mentioned in previous blogs, enjoyed wearing latex,
In 1985 Bowery opened his own nightclub, the infamous Taboo.
His handmade invite to the nightclub's launch.
Nothing was ever out of bounds at Taboo, apart from some of the punters who wanted to get in. It was very druggy and I did read someone say it was the first ecstasy club in Britain.
If interested in knowing a bit more about Taboo and Leigh Bowery's art, check out this article,
Boy George went on the write a musical called Taboo. It premiered in London's West End January 29, 2002, with Boy George playing the character based on Leigh Bowery.
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