Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
LONDON, United Kingdom — "My generation, starting to shout," was how Matthew Miller described the tone of his new collection. This most political of designers has dealt with a gamut of responses to reality in his collections, mostly tending towards downbeat, apathy, despair and the like. But the fundamental bleakness of his proposition has seldom deep-sixed his ability to produce clothes of a striking, monochordal power. In Miller's world, you go stark, or you go home.
Saturday’s pitch was no exception. The location? St Sepulchre. Oy! What kind of a name is that for a saint? Inside the church, choral gloom, the tattered insignia of a dozen army regiments, representing thousands of dead idealists. On every seat, show notes: Degeneration, the title, followed by several dozen words that skated around the notion. A few favourites: carnality, corrosion, depravity, eroticism, infamy, vice. OK, that’s just me. Maybe other guests would have selected ‘dirtied bronze’ or ‘merlot’ or ‘grosgrain’. Regardless, a dystopian tone hung heavy.
Then, the models. Male and female, mouths smashed, like they’d started to shout and been viciously silenced. Feral hair in oily rat’s tails. Clothes strapped, torsos trapped in Velcro bonds. Detailing was military, utilitarian. Even an outbreak of duchesse satin, in a lush mushroom-shaded woman’s jacket, felt like a restraint.
There has always been something fearlessly grim about Miller’s work. He chose to read the bruised mood of his new show as “the consequence of unadulterated freedom.” Young people, unafraid of pain or loss. It’s absolutely one way forward. Please let Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree be the soundtrack.
