BY: ANYA GEORGIJEVIC
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| Source: Imaxtree.com. |
What this season's runways trends really mean.
Thought you had fashion’s rules of proportion nailed? Well, this season is about to throw you a curve – a really voluminous one, complete with silhouettes that challenge the natural lines of the body. On runways from New York to Paris, power is the watchword. Follow the thread back and there’s a nod to the 1980s power shoulder à la Melanie Griffith as Tess in Working Girl or Grace Jones on the cover of her album Nightclubbing. Look to the present and you’ll see Hillary Clinton and her army of pantsuits stitched into this latest version of authoritative dressing.
Last fall, Demna Gvasalia, fashion’s newest enfant terrible, debuted his take on Cristóbal Balenciaga’s legendary sculptural shapes. He opened the show with a houndstooth skirtsuit equipped with shoulder pads and padded hips, imposing the hourglass shape. This season, he showed oversized blazers and trench coats, with the emphasis on the breadth of shoulders. A similar silhouette showed up at Jil Sander. Designer Rodolfo Paglialunga borrowed equally from the ’40s and the ’80s for a look that would certainly have appealed to Griffith’s Tess as she battled Wall Street’s male contingent to shatter the glass ceiling in corporate finance.
Phoebe Philo kept her signature Céline minimalism intact while playing with her version of a zoot suit: baggy high-waisted trousers and an oversized wide-lapel blazer. But she also provided a less formal take on the look by pairing her crisp-white boxy tailored jackets with leather culottes and printed maxiskirts – her suggestion on how to wear the jacket of the season outside an office environment. Despite being intimidating at first (as it’s meant to be), the shoulder-emphasizing jacket is as versatile as that boyfriend blazer you’ve been wearing for the past decade and can easily vibe with a pair of jeans for those I-just-threw-this-on days.
