Ann Demeulemeester: Fall-Winter 2011-12.

Ann Demeulemeester 

Fall-Winter 2011-12

 
 [ Irina Kulikova, Emiyl Baker, Alana Zimmer ]

[ Daiane Conterato/Women, Jamie Bochert/Women ]

What one comes to expect of an Ann Demeulemeester collection (be it Fall-Winter or Spring-Summer ready-to-wear) is the fantastical suspension of contemporary industry tendance—the woman’s business is predicated on the unique fostering of rather anti-fashion concepts. Her opposition to mainstream sartorial need is a refreshing one, and has since 1987, established a brand that lacks a consistent identity because it has slowly evolved to dissolve readily identifiable namesakes. Ann relishes in the fact that fashion is a medium to explore psyche and identity—often sending out a battalion of brooding, sterilely dressed models to showcase composition and form rather than meaninglessly flat, seasonal trends. Rather than sabotaging a consumer niche through being so anarchic and super-focused on the actuality of beauty, Demeulemeester sales have been the highest they’ve ever been—one would probably attribute this to the sought after sensuality of deshabille dressing paired with the commercial lust for physically embodying Ann’s infamous love affair with the immaterial. Last Fall-Winter’s collection of seemingly gauche, though magnificently executed, collection of blood-red coq feathers and chainmail-like whipcord brocade, demonstrated a strong artifice of sexual aggression Ann hadn’t explored in a very long while. She would soon follow that show with a proceeding Spring-Summer collection that emphasized a more languid austerity with a clinical palette of black and white ruched leather frocks that hung more like sculpted apparati than actual ready-to-wear. Paired with chain-link facial shrouds, Spring-Summer 2011’s anti-zeitgeist (who else is sick of this animalier trend?) oeuvre pulled out all of the necessary abstract tactics while maintaining Ann’s anti-fashion Expressionistic spirit. For men, offerings included a basic fencing wardrobe of monochromatic black and white smocking - all showcased in a treated leather-work. For Fall-Winter 2011-12 men’s ready-to-wear, Ann’s Belgian Gothicism and admiration for the macabre (though articulated in very delicate form) reared its head again to demonstrate an emotionally tenuous dedication to staying true, not to industry modes of construction, but to herself, what she functionally adheres to, and how she communicates herself to her audience. Discontinued, for the moment anyways, is the focal structured Belgian rigidity seen throughout her menswear body of work roughly since 2006.  Cropped suit-jackets paired with regimental bibs isn't as dowdy as it seems.  Especially when paired with a buckling suede opera glove, high-sheen combat boots, and unfinished threads left unassumingly on tuxedo jackets.  Carrying over the attenuated refinements of Spring-Summer 2011, next Fall-Winter’s almost indolently put-together wardrobe further reiterates Ann’s oeuvre of refined elegance more than ever.  It just seemed that effortless.   

 But what of Fall-Winter 2011-12?  True-to-form-Demeulmeester is a consummate creature that rarely ever rears off the beaten path.  To propel yourself further and really discover your own understanding of your label’s identity, you must reinvent what you already have to work with.  With that in mind, Ann’s last few shows have maintained a balancing act between venturing into new areas while, for lack of better analogies, sticking to her guns (a stark venue, Edwardian motifs, and a superiorly refined gothika).   If last spring Ann Demeulemeester’s clan of monochromatic warriors espoused a campaign on graphic abstraction, shortchanging the neo-medieval Gothicism that has come to be synonymous with the label, it was clear this time around that Ann was returning to familiar territories.  In a collection that mirrored the silhouette of Fall-Winter 2010-11, she re-animated her voracious need to demonstrate a different movement in order to avoid the usual ‘decontructionist’ labeling flung onto her by most journalists.  By re-invoking the ‘noble savage’ of her past, Ann has sought to re-signify the relevance of diaphanous materials, though less fetishistic than past outings.  Fur is no longer a utilitarian manifestation of armor—it cocoons the wearer from neck to foot.  Horsehair extensions and heavy stitched corsetry and bullet-casing military belts—oh my!  Call it what you want, sexually compliant it was not.  Nor was it evocative of a menacingly unsettling femininity.