During their quest for enlightenment in the 1970s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved to a hippie commune in North Jutland, the part of Denmark that Peter Jensen comes from. Though that unlikely affinity wasn t the reason why he built his Resort collection around Yoko, the latest in his series of left-field fashion heroines, it certainly confirmed him in his commitment. And he needed that confirmation, because Yoko didn t come as naturally as his other muses. In fact, Jensen acknowledged that this particular inspiration might have been a little more academic than usual. "In the beginning, I had a hard time looking at her art, so I had to educate myself." True, how do you go about translating into clothing the conceptual or performance-based works that made Yoko s reputation as an artist? One of her most famous pieces, for instance, consisted of the audience cutting pieces of clothing off her. Jensen referenced it with slashed T-shirts. Under the slashes, a small pair of scissors dangled. DIY Yoko. Much easier was a print on cotton voile which abstracted her frizz of hair, or a grapefruit motif which echoed one of her books (called Grapefruit, naturally). Continuing in the fruit vein, Jensen hand-embroidered the Beatles green apple logo on a white blouse, and cheekily co-opted it with his own rabbit logo.
Jensen is nothing if not thorough in his research. Those flared trousers? Borrowed from a photo of Yoko and John walking down Fifth Avenue. The makeup artist for his presentation was the woman Yoko uses when she s in London. The set was made up of intriguing bits and pieces—a ladder, an Exercycle—from past performances. Still, it all rather begged the question: Why? "I like her intellectual engagement, her openness," Jensen said. "She s not sexy, but she s sensual." Maybe there s something there that gels with Jensen s own evolution as a designer. There were appealing pieces here—a tiered organdy smock, a red sheath with a naive floral design that was his answer to the grapefruit and the apple—that had little to say about Yoko but a lot to say about Jensen. He claimed, by the way, that the woman herself is absolutely thrilled with his tribute.
