To research this Vionnet collection, Goga Ashkenazi and her five-person design team flew low by chopper over an erupting Icelandic volcano. She based the prodding golden tusks of the show s earrings and other hardware on her latest piercing. "It s on my nipple," she added (after prompting). That s commitment. Ashkenazi is an energy gazillionaire whose Vionnet project is fueled by her fever for fashion: Rather than the professional aesthetics of Parsons or Saint Martins, the frame of reference is personal, rooted in the extravagance of opportunity and disintegration of post-glasnost Kazakhstan and Russia. We re not in Kansas anymore—as evidenced, perhaps, by the odd de trop crotch-window on a tartan closer and an abundance of borderline medical leg-strapping. Fundamentally, though, this collection took a classic theme and ran stolidly with it. Along with the drooping, time-for-the-trash wilted flowers that hung above the runway, the most explicit expressions of her Fall 15 appetite for destruction were lava-splatter jacquard, spore-spotted knit furs, and cracked-mud-effect painted leather separates. "It s the beauty of rotting processes and decay," Ashkenazi said.
Sprinkled in were many mysterious-heroine cowls-cum-capes (some in a less-mysterious golden netting), backless facade dresses, and a challenging section of pants with built-in shoes—how do you get them on? The silkily quivering, aglow blue dress at the end was inspired by a Greenlandic iceberg, and the trolley-fied Mosaic handbag was inspired by the fact that Ashkenazi often finds herself lugging handbags through airports. Vionnet is a reflection of its owner; therefore, it is highly individual. And why not?
