Giles Deacon: Fall-Winter 2011-12

February 23, 2011:  London
 

Giles Deacon
Fall-Winter 2011-12

 
[ models:  Ajak Deng, Kristina Salinovic ]

Giles Deacon’s bag of magic tricks, which for the past few show seasons has boasted an array of graphic, celebratory joie de vivre wardrobing, has all of a sudden turned rather conspicuously dark.  Not exactly to the levels of the hauntingly macabre dance-of-the-red-masques collection he concocted back in 2008, but in a traditional facet of highly dramatic, unapologetically rigorous dressing.  While a departure from your eponymous repertoire is necessary at times to promote interest and keep everybody awake—going off the beaten path of your unique disposition can appear at times silly as opposed to creatively ambitious.  But is Giles’s embracing the saccharinely sweet fashion frivolity at his namesake in the same ways he is at Emanuel Ungaro?  Surely not.  For next fall, look for a menacingly sober Edwardian silhouette, garnished with prismatic feathers and embellished with 19^th-Century iconography (including depictions of martyrdom, Victoriana, and historical figures’ executions).  Other offerings include:  harness leather bodices mutatated into feathered gowns, reworked wasp corsetry in dominatrix leather, and (prim?)-proper high-collared blousons.  If it all seems a little too Lee McQueen for you, I’m right there with you.  No longer surreptitiously fetishistic, Giles is at this point in his career primed to deliver what he’s been hinting at for the greater half of a decade.