Inconsistency at Ungaro.

Giles Deacon for Emanuel Ungaro

Resort:  Spring-Summer 2012

  

It goes without saying that the house of Emanuel Ungaro has a complicated, customarily unstable history in the French fashion market.  With its archive of fruitless one-hit-wonder creative directors, it seemed the once unrivaled couture house would remain incapable of establishing a fixed, coherent brand identity to propel it from its beleaguered status.  That is, of course, until the creative reigns were bestowed upon the couture-level wizardry of none other than Giles Deacon in 2010.  No stranger to the saccharin excesses of feminine floral prints, couture maestro Deacon has already heralded two formidable ready-to-wear collections and a satisfactory pre-fall showing—all of which were met with the laudatory approval of the toughest of Ungaro devotees. 

[ Fall-Winter 2011-12 Emanuel Ungaro by Giles Deacon ]

The collection presented during the Fall-Winter 2011-12 show season this past March finally marked a re-working of maison fundamentals with its introduction of the kind of stalwart femininity so many seek to covet.  Its unsentimental linear silhouette of form-restricting black wasn’t as masochistic as it was emblematic of a much needed departure.  Time to move away from the flirtatious, flower-laden analogies often associated with the Ungaro profile and to re-purpose the Ungaro woman into the vamping archetype Giles sees women embody at his eponymous line.  Such was not the order of Resort 2012, shown yesterday in a company showroom in New York.  Much to my chagrin, Giles did not forge ahead with the taboo of aggressively sexual women shrink-wrapped in transparency, leather, and forbidding lace and instead presented a resort collection that had me thinking more Matthew Williamson (circa Pucci tenure) than the competitive modes of dressing downloaded in the Giles DNA.  In fact, resort’s heavy endowment of graphically floral patterns and optically stupefying prints had me thinking Giles had been replaced by Williamson, upon first glance.  Its saving grace however came at the end of the collection in the form of hunter-green tinted military suiting (parachute jackets, jumpsuits, and bombers) that had me thinking back to the fairly uncelebrated collection Tom Ford delivered at Gucci for Spring 2001.  But even its presence in a collection of hyper tarty prints translated as a complete misstep.  If this was a purposeful balancing act by Giles to maintain his own philosophy and that of the manic imagery associated with the house, dare I beseech Giles to pick one over the other. 

 

images via S T Y L E