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NEW YORK, United States — It's unlikely that this season will produce a back story as quirky as the one that inspired Karen Walker's collection. Zvedzny Gorodok, aka Star City, was the off-the-map hub of the Soviet space programme. It's where the first satellite, the first living creature (tragic Laika) and the first man and woman were launched into space. But, by the time Benetton got to shoot Star City for Colors Magazine, it was a vision of the future that had collapsed into hopeless seediness, cosmonauts posed against stained chintz and bad wallpaper. That juxtaposition was irresistible to Walker and her Russian-born husband and amanuensis Mikhail Gherman.
It played out brilliantly in an immaculately styled show that matched an ironic 1970s confidence — gold leather glam, scarf dresses that were Studio 54 ready — with a Constructivist utility: zips, topstitching, silver nylon parkas, blousons and cosmonauts' jumpsuits. The soundtrack — Sparks' Giorgio Moroder-produced "The Number One Song in Heaven"— was a note-perfect complement. And then, in sly observation of the rural context in which Star City evolved, Walker also included peasant motifs in embroidered muslins and smock shapes in broderie anglaise.
But there was one outfit that truly clarified the peculiar outsider sensibility that has made Walker into a fashion cult (although the global sales of her sunglasses actually defy culthood). A pleated knee length skirt, an ivory ribbed knit, a pioneer scarf in a flaring Soviet, all anchored on a sensible heel, created a perfectly ladylike vision that managed to be simultaneously disconcerting. That’s the transformative power of a genuine design vision.
