JUST AN ILLUSION
Surrealism is providing a stylish escape from the current news cycle, writes Samantha Murray Greenway.
Sculptural triangles projecting like pieces of window frame from a plaid coat. Evening dresses with belt buckles as big as steering wheels. Full-length, trickof-the-eye prints that give your body someone else’s silhouette. If it all sounds a bit surreal, that’s because it is.
Fashion seems preoccupied with surrealism, and designers are following the dictionary definition: “A style in art and literature in which ideas, images, and objects are combined in a strange way, like in a dream.” John Galliano’s couture collection for Maison Margiela delivered. The designer known for his rich, story-laden fashion shows painted model’s faces to look like porcelain dolls. Layers of Latex added modern gloss to old-fashioned corsetry. Naked breasts, hips and thighs appeared to quiver beneath but, like Vaseline over a lens, the distinction between what was real and what was illusion was blurred.
At Marc Jacobs, models walked among the out-sized legs of enormous chairs and tables. Like paper cut-out dolls from the 1960s, their hair was huge (faces tiny by comparison) and clothes bulkily stood away from the body. Black bras and knickers were printed onto tops in realistic placement – a clever trompe l’oeil that is bound to launch lookalikes. And, sometimes, golden clown shoes adorned the feet.
There were dresses made out of backpacks at Balenciaga and coats cut to look like they had extra sleeves at Sacai. The message that things might not be quite as they seem was sometimes disquieting, sometimes quirkily cute. Why surrealism now? Given the current news cycle, the idea of dipping into a dream state or some kind of fantastical distraction is understandably appealing.
Then again, it might just be about short-attention spans: When clothes get serious (all those non-basic basics, the wide shouldered-jackets and expensivelooking sweaters) or slightly dull (all that athleisure which still remains, long after lockdown), drama by way of scale, a sense of the absurd or a trick of the eye, livens things up.
Elsa Schiaparelli was the original designer synonymous with surrealism. In the 1930s, she collaborated with artists like Dali and Cocteau. There were hats in the shape of up-ended shoes, and ones that looked like folded up newspapers; there were dresses printed with lobsters (which went with Wallis Simpson on her honeymoon), brooches the size of dinner plates and knits with different trompe l’oeil effects. Some of the simplest – a picture of a bow knitted into the neckline of a sweater – still look impressively modern now, so you can imagine how ground-breaking it all looked back then.
In more recent years, American designer Daniel Roseberry has breathed new life into the couture side of Schiaparelli. Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian are fans (both famously appreciate fashion as fantasy – Lady Gaga once wore a dress made of meat and the foundation of Kardashian style – that extreme silhouette – is a surreal statement in itself.) More recently at the Oscars, Roseberry gave the brilliant actor Sandra HÜller a dress with flyaway shoulders and embroidered the outline of men’s Y-fronts on Emily Blunt’s shimmering dress.
How will this play out away from the red carpet? Just look at Jonathan Anderson who has made surrealism his masterstroke at Loewe. There have been dresses with creases and movement built-in, so they look freeze-framed in motion. And prints of life-sized naked reclining bodies on dresses placed to look as though that might just be what you are (not) wearing. His signature shoe for his own label, J.W.Anderson, is a slip-on loafer with a snaffle that has links as big as your thumb. So, it could be as simple as one madly oversized detail, a print that tricks the eye, or it
might just be about attitude. When you don’t take fashion too seriously, when ideas of ‘good taste’ get thrown out the window, you give yourself permission to have fun.