Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been? (Sincerely dissing the MOD trend of Fall/Winter 2013.2014 fashion weeks and figuring out why this fashion week sucks)

We all appreciate vintage to some extent. Pinterest has an umpteenth number of Audrey Hepburn inspired boards, editorials converge to exploit shows like Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire and the average person enjoys a classic non-modern era movie.

 

Rear Window-- The Kiss scene with Grace Kelly always makes my heart skip a beat

Designers this season seem to have imagined from vox populi  that a mod trend would be a good direction, especially given that The Great Gatsby is set to be released in May of this year. It's a perfect assemblage to envision movie-goers to see such a sure-to-be-hit blockbuster and want to imitate the wardrobe.

Where fashion has gone wrong, however, is that the mod trend is so ubiquitous and so discombobulated that it grows tiresome, especially when nobody knows what era is being covered. What could have been a very sophisticated homage to the roaring 20's or even the 50's (many artistic concepts blend the two together) has turned into a fashion bust. Added to the equation-- many designers had nothing new to put out there so they just did a retrospective of their last (insert number) years.

Designer Jean Paul Gaultier went retro regarding his own brand to stir some attention but when you have seen it already, does it do ANYTHING to surprise you?

Fighting the urge to cut off the mullets and extensions

 

Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2013 collection while TREMENDOUSLY gorgeous may be to blame for causing Fall/Winter's mod trend.

 

 

The Mad Men inspired collection by Banana Republic starring Coco Rocha (criticized by some that say Coco Rocha is "too skiny" to model for a 50's inspired collection-- I don't care about that, the clothes are fugly).

 

Poor lovely Coco

 

One collection from NYFW that I couldn't help but feel embarassed by was Chloë Sevigny for O.C.

Inspired by her time protesting at Occupy Wall Street and the protests of the 60's (I can't even type that without rolling my eyes), the collection juxtaposed the 1% vs. the protestors and of course, mod fashion. I couldn't stand it for the mere fact it was shallow-- for a 20-something to say the protests of the 60's are the same as the protests at Occupy Wall Street (and the overall presentation of using protest signs to write random crap) is pretty discombobulated and comes across as meaningless.

 

 

 

 

Tacky to the nth degree

 

 

Perhaps the worst for last: Milan fashion week had Versace's take on 90's Grunge and some plaid/leather/fur mixtures that were just as confusing as awkward.

 

 

Clueless? Definitely.

 

 

All of the poorly transmuted images of bygone fashion in mind, a major positive is that the designers incorporating innovation and new fabrics have begun to stand out. Check out my Hussein Chalayan post below to see.

 

 

Images from: gettyimages, style.com, princessgracekelly.tumblr.com and Banana Republic