Lifestyle
The link between fashion and architecture was strengthened by a cadre of New York-based designers for the Spring-Summer 2016 season, who looked to great works by early- to mid-20th century architects and interior designers for inspiration.
At Creatures of Comfort, Jade Lai riffed on La Cité Radieuse, a Brutalist residential enclave in Marseille designed by Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), infusing the colors of coastal France with the stylish sensibility of the architect’s close collaborators, namely his cousin Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand.
Breezy summer suits, flowing dresses, off-shoulder knits and colorful tweeds were mixed with denim and ochre ensembles that evoked Perriand’s furniture, while custom prints on Italian cottons alluded to windows of the Brutalist buildings.
Jason Wu also summoned the spirit of Jeanneret, infusing his signature American sportswear with an emphasis on ruffles, lightness, and glamour. “I was inspired by midcentury furniture, Jeanneret and pictures by [photographer] John Rawlings; [there’s] something elegant and glamorous about spring,” said Wu.
Beginning with a teal trench with an exaggerated collar of raw edges, the luxurious upholstery-inflected collection progressed into russet waistcoats, ochre wrap-skirts and black lace and tiered ruffles of vibrant florals.
Phillip Lim looked to architect Maya Lin for his anniversary show — his label 3.1 Phillip Lim turns 10 this year — and riffed on the popular-for-spring “stop and smell the flowers” theme. A self-confessed “huge fan” of Lin’s work, particularly the Wavefield at Storm King and the war memorial in D.C., Lim’s pieces evoked sculptures in a garden, with breezy, black and white prints, neutrals and greens. Structure came by way of black leather tunics, nude satin drawstring jackets, while plays on masculine-versus-feminine were seen in pinstriped ruffled tops and asymmetrical skirts.
Opening Ceremony invoked the iconic structures of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, with Fallingwater being a large influence, manifesting as skirts assembled from horizontal strips of cloth, and Bonsai trees embroidered onto charmeuse mini-dresses in beige. Co-founders Carol Lim and Huberto Leon also silkscreened images of Wright’s colorful stained glass panels for the Avery Coonley Playhouse onto a series of T-shirts, hoodies and kaftans.
Over at Delpozo, designer Josep Font’s women invoked Federico García Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads and Emilie Flöge, the Austrian fashion designer who was the life companion of the painter Gustav Klimt. Font’s unabashedly fairy-tale sensibility toward Spanish couture incorporated deliciously crafty elements, like metallic fringe, appliqué flowers, and pastel-hued metallic scrollwork evoking Spanish tiles. Originally trained as an architect, Font’s penchant for volume manifested in exaggerated ruffles at the hip, and voluminous curtain-like metallic jacquard skirts.
The pièce de resistance was a ball gown studded entirely in multi-colored, metal-studded polka dots, which, despite the collection’s folkloric influence, strongly evoked the architectural masterpiece that is Antoni Gaudi’s Parc Guell, and the vibrant mosaics within, in Barcelona.
