The invitation—a black-and-white photo of boiling clouds—cued the elemental spirit of Gareth Pugh s new collection. Aware of how often he s been stuck in a sci-fi box, the designer stressed, "This is not from a spaceship, it s from under the ground. I wanted it to feel earthy." If the palette—black, gray, and hematite, the color of oxidized iron—was of this earth, it was definitely somewhere way down inside. Matthew Stone s soundtrack, which used a piece of the Krzysztof Penderecki music from The Shining, compounded the mines-of-Mordor mood.
Pugh presented his new looks in mesmerizing video form. And in that context, his clothes made perfect sense in a way that they haven t always on the runway. While the 2-D format meant it took a visit to the showroom to appreciate the texture of Pinhead outfits carpeted with fine spikes like a lethal fur, it did allow for a chance to see the clothes in movement, whipped into aerodynamic shapes on screen by an elemental wind. The designer s new silhouette—falling away in a pleated-back A-line from a small shoulder—was the direct inverse of the triangular shape that made his name. It gave a swirling, capelike volume to coats and jackets. The new trouser shape—high-waisted, with a full pant that covered Pugh s platformed footwear—also amplified the volume moving around the body. (The shoes themselves looked like snub-snouted devil dogs; they almost seemed to be grinning evilly.)
Otherwise, the collection followed on very closely from the menswear Pugh showed in January (he is also selling those clothes in women s sizes). That was particularly apparent in detailing like the triangles that patterned an ornately worked mink jacket or the hooded, pointed-hem leather coat that is his signature piece. When other designers imagine a complementary couple in their collections for men and women, it s usually as boyfriend and girlfriend. Pugh sees a brother and sister in his clothes, siblings ruling his tragic kingdom. There s something appropriately Jacobean about such a notion as it applies to fashion s most theatrically dark designer.
