Christopher Kane is not too proud to name his shame. He s an ophidiophobe—he s terrified of snakes. But, just like the song lyric goes, fear is a man s best friend. From the very beginning of Kane s career, snakes have slithered through his collections to great effect. He claims it s got something to do with his Catholic upbringing: Adam and Eve, original sin, sneaky serpents in Eden. Fact is, everyone should be so lucky as to have such a creative outlet for their manias and phobias, especially when snakes have so much to offer in terms of texture, pattern, color, sinuous silhouette…
All four distinguished Kane s Pre-Fall collection as one more sterling addition to a repertoire that continues to hypnotize as effectively as, well, as a hooded cobra. Except that this time, it was the boa constrictor that Kane had his eye on. It made its presence felt in huge, elasticized, snake-printed bands as wide as a wrestler s belt. Kane used one to put the squeeze on a dress that was little more than a huge square of satin. The result—a bit like belting a Hefty Sak—didn t work as well as the tightly wrapped biker jacket, though it did highlight the risks Kane likes to take with his silhouettes. They tend to pay off. Those tricky falling-apart dresses he first showed last fall? They were huge sellers. This season, he added zips, for a little more structure.
Where Kane makes his riskiest moves is often in the shadow land between propriety and vulgarity. A lesser talent might trip over a detail like the frill of snake-printed chiffon that spilled from seams, or the denim pieces, also snake-printed and trimmed in black leather ("It makes the snake even more evil," Kane exulted.) Or the goat-fur jackets, luminously tipped in a near-toxic serpentine green or blue. (The designer thrilled to the prospect of them paired with high heels in fuchsia snake.) What marries good and bad taste in a Kane collection is his unique, unholy, alchemical ability to transform the monstrous into the glamorous. He d call it "weird science." It was responsible for his latest visual motif: a molecular structure that cropped up on football-jersey tops, as fastenings on a snaky jacquard shift, and as jewelry with a double-helix flavor. This time next year, you can expect to see the Kane molecule going viral.
