Why go wild in the country when you can go wild in Paris? That’s Isabel Marant’s thinking for spring. She simultaneously dipped into the early 1980s vibe of mohawked Annabella Lwin and her band, Bow Wow Wow—their big hit was “Go Wild in the Country,” of course—and the tribalist punkiness of the era in general, which was then filtered through what Marant does so well and so effortlessly: Make great clothes.
As to the specifics, this was a hypnotically fantastic mélange of intricate braiding and embroideries for colorful silk chevron short dresses; weathered black-gray denim blousons; studded black leather shorts; lots of chamois-effect suede
blanket-stitched with leather, some of it swished with fringe; flat moccasin boots; suede hippie-ish satchel bags; weighty gold bangles; and, oh yes, that eternal Marant accessory—legs.
(Also, I hate to interrupt your review-reading pleasure for a minute, but a quick aside on Bow Wow Wow. The band was looked after by the late pop svengali Malcolm McLaren, the onetime manager of the Sex Pistols, and he hired the teenage Lwin to front the band, figuring she’d be malleable and easily manipulated. Au contraire: Lwin turned out to know her own mind and was always ready to stand her ground. Sounds like the archetypal Marant woman, if you ask me.)
At a preview for her collection, Marant and her design director, Kim Bekker, were pulling off the racks all manner of intricately worked pieces: a shrug on a jacket, which fluttered because of its silken, almost iridescent strands of fringing; a beige and abstract print top patched together, its seams accentuated by braiding that zigzagged all over it; and two long dresses, one black, the other metallic gray, constructed out of panels held together by silver pearl-like balls and flashing a touch of skin.
This was an artisanally ambitious collection from Marant. “I wanted to go back to our roots, do something really craft-y,” she said. “It’s about a tribe of really strong women. And there was a bit of a vibe of the Amazon.” She showed a striking swirling needleworked dress whose pattern, formed from the weaving of its silk yarn, had been inspired by South American butterflies. “It was really these soft and warm colors we wanted, almost like the colors of a sunset,” Bekker said of the collection’s palette of rust, mauve, pink, and purple. “And the wings have this almost velvety texture that we wanted too.”
One of the things that has been bubbling up over the last few days when talking about spring’s collections is considering the difference between the male gaze and the female gaze. It’s always been a conversation, but somehow it’s gotten more frequent, more persistent than ever before. When it comes to Marant, there definitely is a difference: Every collection is a study in fashion as a conspiratorial gesture of solidarity to women. In other words, it’s like she and Bekker are saying: We understand you, and we will make clothes you can understand—and wear.
For instance, it may be that some of her women want the lankier leggy look that Marant does so well, but don’t necessarily want to show their legs: The label’s newer trousers, with their lean, cropped, kick-flared look to the rescue. Also, as Marant indicated with the show’s shoes lining the studio floor, nothing gets higher than a tiny kitten heel, but most everything else is super-flat. “We wanted the girls to be in flats,” Marant said, “to make them feel liberated. No one really wears heels anymore.”
