I brought back a certain sexual glamour, which we probably hadn’t seen since the late seventies because of the way that AIDS altered fashion.” It was that approach that attracted swathes of actors and actresses to the brand, controversially exploding the idea that the brand was synonymous with sex and celebrity upon a generation of young consumers. When asked what he considered his legacy of Gucci, Ford answered: “I think I brought back hedonism, a certain kind of ostentatious fashion. The images perfectly resonated Ford’s clean, polished vision of sensual sexuality and luxury. For this particular collection, Testino shot South African model Georgiana Grenville in a Rem Koolhaas interior, provocatively gazing out to the viewer in a silk shirt unbuttoned to the navel and flirting with her lover in one of the streamlined jersey gowns, her slicked-back hair matching the gold-tone buckle under the peephole. On another note, perhaps the best appointments Ford made at Gucci was that of Mario Testino and Carine Roitfeld, who together created groundbreaking advertising imagery for the brand. So I will probably forever be stuck in the sixties and seventies,” he has said. “I think everyone’s notion of beauty is formed – your sense of taste, most of your values and opinions are formed in your childhood – the first thing that you ever see that makes you think, ‘God, that’s beautiful’: Those things stick in your mind forever. Just looking at the louche trouser suits, dramatic fur coats draped over the shoulders of models and the huge lapels and necklaces, it’s clear that the days of his Studio 54 youth were Ford’s biggest reference point. It was under this watchful gaze that Ford designed the A/W96 collection, drawing from the designer’s use of jersey and the long, columnar dresses he made for Elsa Peretti. Tim Blanks pointed out that it “lit the fuse of the sex bomb” and that Ford’s vision combined points of American sportswear with the “notion of the power of sin,” while Wintour’s Vogue described it as “the fashion equivalent of a one-night stand at Studio 54”.Ī photograph of Tom Ford’s black lacquered desk at Gucci shows an Andy Warhol portrait of Roy Halston staring out, somewhat aloof. “Along came Tom with his low-cut hipsters and his slinky jersey dresses, and grunge was sent scurrying off back to Seattle.” It was Tom Ford’s A/W96 collection in which, he said, “it all came together for the first time.” He introduced some of the key motifs of his ten-year reign at the Florentine company: a tailored, Helmut Newton-esque androgyny dark-eyed, chignoned beauty city-slick pinstripes the red velvet tuxedo for him and her super skinny belts and dramatically large furs slinky white jersey gowns with peepholes fastened by smooth golden hardware. “When I think back to the early 90s, when he first arrived on my radar screen, fashion was buried deep in the shapeless layers of the horrible grunge look", wrote Anna Wintour in 2004. "It lit the fuse of the sex bomb" – Tim Blanks What follows is the birth of Margiela-inspired deconstruction, the downbeat photography Bill Clinton termed "heroin chic" and the prepubescent-looking, angsty poster girl of it all: the waif. Its roots were a reaction to the conspicuous consumption and widened wealth disparity of the late 80s, with a poor economy bringing it all to a crashing, crowd-pleasing halt. Then, the luxury business of the early 90s was facing hardship, largely due to a widespread anti-fashion sensibility that infiltrated the mainstream. Once a go-to for the leather, luggage and furs of jet-setting celebrities, in the 1980s Gucci had become slightly stagnant within the US market (counterfeits were in abundance and Aldo Gucci’s decision to launch a line of cheaper product resulted in it becoming a little too ubiquitous in airport boutiques), and a bit too posh in Europe (in fact, Peter York and Ann Barr’s 1982 publication The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook described the upper-class penchant for a pair of horse-bit loafers purchased at the Old Bond Street shop as borne of respect for its “smart but military equine look, like a good piece of uniform with regimental brass”).
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