Just before this show took off, an Australian-accented announcement over the PA urged us to ensure that our essential items were in hand, plus to place any bulky items in the overhead lockers. The opening looks were made up of a series of sportily piped viscose suiting with utility details that were accessorized with rakishly eye-obscuring pillbox hats in Pan Am blue, beehive wigs, and silky scarfs shot with metal that had been twisted to have the flyaway élan of the Petit Prince. Combined with the double-face and bicolored coats that cocooned the wearer in drape and featured an inbuilt head covering that we saw later, we started to suspect we were flying somewhere over deeply filtered Pierre Cardin territory: nostalgic futurism.
Backstage, Deanna Fanning said, “We were thinking about identity in moments of transit and transience.” The aviation details, she added, were significant to one of the characters she and her sister, Laura, had created as imagined ciphers upon which to hang this collection. Another character, they added, was a collector of memories: This explained the house-developed postage-stamp prints on double-front Belstaff-ish moto jackets and zippered jeans developed in collaboration with Levi’s. Apparently, the designers had to explain the archaic concept of stamps to some of their interns.
A third character was dubbed “the warrior.” As well as wearing the vaguely armor-ish metal mesh pieces that also sometimes seemed deconstructed from a moto starting point, she battled through in flowingly flou bias-cut dresses in jewel-toned satins. “We’re thinking about movement and how sometimes it can be really tough to occupy space, or feel like you shouldn’t occupy it,” said Deanna. This was a precisely piloted exploration of nostalgia-shot maximalist liminal-ism that you could see the brand’s many fans being enthusiastically on board for.
