HEART OF GLASS
Once I had love, and it was a gas…
A vacation has pushed me behind the fashion news once more. I had a lovely time, thanks for asking. Tardiness aside, I would like to discuss a women’s collection that I have found to be very rich recently – specifically Christopher Kane’s 2012 resort collection. Here, Kane playfully experiments with rainbow gradients of colour, metallic fabrics and sharp geometry.
It is in this sharp, triangular geometry that the depth of the collection is made apparent. Aside from being a charming and funny, albeit perhaps slightly trite take on the iconography of the Gay Pride movement, Kane’s triangular clutch appears to me to be remarkably similar to a prism. The motifs of colour gradients and sharp geometry are thus in dialogue with one another, united by the symbol of the prism.
The symbolic value of the prism is both dense and rich. White light bathes our surroundings through much of our waking lives. It is so pervasive in its presence as to become an assumption, both inevitable and omnipresent. With this inevitability, and the accompanying inevitability of darkness, white light is seen as somehow pure, a baseline. Diffracting white light with a prism challenges this – stripping it to its component parts, each of which are coloured, and thus usually seen as distinct. In everyday speech, it is common to say orange light, for example; whereas white light is simply referred to as ‘light.’ Despite their highly colourful appearance at first glance, many of Kane’s pieces are thus meditations on minimalism – refutations of chromatic purity that are themselves pure in their lack of ornamentation.
There are, of course, a number of pieces in Kane’s collection that do not adhere to this minimalist motif, particularly some of his metallic pieces. Yet, even these remain engaged with the minimalist discourse contained within the prism, though a brief digression is required to see why. Concrete aside, metal and glass are the cornerstones of Modernist architecture. I recently read an article arguing that the Crystal Palace, constructed in 1851 for London’s Great Exhibition, was the first modern building. This was because the Palace was the first truly general purpose space – its glass walls and spindly metallic frame enabled it to house almost anything, a fact driven home by the lively debate as to what to do with the structure when the Exhibition ended.
Kane’s designs are equally amorphous, blending metal, glass and prismatic colours to create garments that defy categorization – they are minimal and ornate, playful and severe, with each trait being emphasized to a different degree in each piece. If Versace’s garments are protective in their solidity, then Kane’s allow the wearer to take solace in their fluidity and flexibility.
