Go for baroque
The lavish styles of past centuries have been reinvented on the runways and in the wardrobes of stars such as Madonna.
Corsetry will be coveted next season. It’s inevitable, especially since Esther – the Material Girl formerly known as Madonna – keeps flashing hers in her current Re-Invention world tour.
The sexy nude and gold glittery number she wears to open the show – continually photographed right side up, upside down and in profile with bosom overflowing – makes headlines in every city in which she performs.
French designer Christian Lacroix was called upon to liberate Madonna from this typically binding and inhibiting garment, Women’s Wear Daily has reported.
Lacroix, an expert in theatre performance costumes, reconfigured Madonna‘s corsetry by making the boning bendable and fabrics far-reaching to enable the diva to move freely on stage – back arches and all. And it seems the pop icon is breaking a costume record (if there is such a thing).
Women’s Wear Daily also noted she’s taking 14 big-name designers, including Dolce & Gabbana, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Stella McCartney and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel on her 14-city North American tour.
Style’s pendulum always swings back to push forward. For fall, designers are blowing the dust off fashion’s most historic silhouettes. Besides corsetry are hoop skirts, bustles and leg-of-mutton sleeves.
Pick any style – baroque, rococo, Victorian, Edwardian – and designers have gone petticoat over panier for costumey Old World clothing.
The red corset designed by Lacroix for the X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS portfolio
The couture muse of Christian Dior designer John Galliano was the rococo icon Marquise de Pompadour. Jean-Paul Gaultier’s was the swashbuckling Scarlet Pimpernel and dashing musketeers. Miuccia Prada cruised and perused Victorian archives for her resort collection.
“Styles have been so tight, tailored and sucked in to the body for so long,” says Royal Ontario Museum fashion curator and author Alexandra Palmer. The time was ripe for change.
“Softly draped with a space between the textile and the body is more discreet. It does evoke a sense of history… , capturing the fleeting,” she says.
Trend watchers agree only select details from fashion’s billowing and voluminous past – not all – will become huge hits on the streets. You won’t have to dip to swaggering lengths to pouf up your fall wardrobe.
The goal is not to look like the Marquise de Pompadour or Marie Antoinette. A corset here or a swooshing cape there may be all you need.
From an article by Sylvi Capelaci, London free Press