Gareth Pugh has been busy. The night before his show, the opera Eliogabalo opened at the Palais Garnier, in Paris, with 60 costumes designed by Pugh. Inevitably, Pugh s work for the opera wound up informing his new collection—both in terms of its theme and in its unapologetic theatricality. Written by Francesco Cavalli in 1667, Eliogabalo is rather obscure; it centers on a tyrannical child emperor in Rome who anointed himself a sun god. The story struck Pugh as (cough, Trump) timely.
There s really no beating a Gareth Pugh show for sheer showmanship. He uses all the devices at his disposal to drive home a message—and this season, he accelerated hard into that impulse, sending out numerous looks in bullion-like gold that more or less treated the body as a stage on which he could erect fabulist sets. These heavily decorated ensembles eventually gave way, however, to a collection notable for its atypical earthiness. There was something rather matter-of-fact about Pugh s breezy pieces in black, white, or purple silk—it wasn t a stretch, for instance, to imagine a Hollywood star treading a red carpet in his one-shoulder white gown (Angelina Jolie, maybe? It had the right Pallas Athena vibe for her). But it was the striped and sunburst-patterned looks in linen that really took the Pugh aesthetic somewhere new. His broad sundresses, caftans, and obi-belted looks struck an entirely original tone: The models came across like the chicest ayahuasca shamans ever. Which, unintentionally or not, hearkened back to this show s political subtext.
