A blueprint for what to wear

Blue is hardly new on the scene. Pantone designated a sort of French blue as its top color for 2008. And the color has become iconic for sustainable water stewardship and perhaps partially displaced green as a signifier for environmental responsibility. Dense blues do seem to have come into their own, as interiors and I like deep blues in that setting. Visit The Blue Apartment , a partner in the nydesignroom opening of Post-Retro Modern on May 16.

The intense blues have been slow to catch on in fashion, especially as navy blue has become so stodgily corporatized. A Grassroots Futures take on the New Conventions of the Edgier Business World will be coming soon. What I see during my grassroots travels is a long neglected synthesis of the green/blue nexus. Appropriately on my way to the recent Left Forum at Pace University, I spotted a glorious bottle-green taffeta flounce skirt with a black lace border paired with a robin’s egg blue top. And need I mention that among the first green shoots among the blues the much-maligned turquoise appears more and more frequently.

post-retro-modern and functional frills

Space Available?

Fashion shows have never attracted the diversity of gallery art openings, not to mention rock concerts. Mostly I have steered clear, preferring the “found” fashion show that is the Bedford Avenue station on the L subway line here in Williamsburg. What is the fashion equivalent of a white box, a space where the designer’s aesthetic can be displayed without distraction? Who can help being intrigued by the space designed for Prada in Seoul by Rem Koolhaas/AMO? This is especially true for a commentator enjoying the hospitality of the nydesignroom Web site. At the nydesignroom space, a vigorous conversation can often be detected between architecture (materials, structure) with the aesthetics of the human figure and the requirements of social dress. The products and selections echo these voices.

GGrippo shares my ambivalence about fashion shows. While I would quibble about their elitism and issues of access, he might focus more on critiquing stodginess and convention. His own 2005 fashion show in the MALBA in Buenos Aires was more an art installation than a marketing platform. (People still wanted to wear and did buy the clothes). The other day, Grippo exclaimed, “I want to do a runway show.”

The drive to make actual a full and near ideal expression of design sentiment characterizes the practitioners of every art form—even the applied arts. Hence, a show. However, in my opinion, a fashion show with or without runway needs a space that provides a hint of the actual settings where flesh-and-blood human beings will actually wear the clothes.

Innovative temporary spaces for displaying fashion are very fine. However, for myself, I might be more interested in viewing collections on models making their way down the street amidst all the people who with greater or less success present their own fashion show of one to the world every day. That might be a very democratic test of how successful a collection is in pointing the way to a fashion future and inspiring adoption.