Review: Marc Jacobs spotlights the wistful, lonely beauty of the fallen angel
Reporting from New York — Going to New York Fashion Week can make you feel a lot of things, but loneliness — the existential; all-alone-on-the-planet kind — is not usually one of them. Yet, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, designer and master showman Marc Jacobs managed to conjure up a palpable sense of loneliness — and wistfulness, and melancholy and even a little bit of nostalgia — that peculiar subset of emotions that key into what once was but no longer is.
Jacobs’ traditional fashion-week-closing show took place, as it always does, in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory. This time, though, the drastically pared-back number of guests occupied only a postage-stamp-sized space, the rest of the interior disappearing into the inky darkness, with the show’s musical accompaniment (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble performing Bryce Dessner’s “Aheymâ€) positioned off in the distance. The feeling of loneliness was furthered by the way the show was lit — with a spotlight that focused tightly on each look as it came down the runway, and, thanks to a mirror-like coating on the floor cast the silhouette of each model up toward the ceiling of the Armory, where they fluttered like shadow angels.
“It’s a fallen angel kind of beauty,†read Jacobs’ sparse show notes, “but still an angel.â€
With an emphasis on the trapeze silhouette (all the better to evoke the idea of folded-back angel wings, right?) the collection’s standout pieces occupied the opposite ends of the wardrobe spectrum: the heavy and the light.
In the first camp were capes (a leopard-print number memorably opened the show), double-breasted cape coats as triangular as traffic cones, in navy blue or gray windowpane checks, and belted A-line coats in coral red and mint green (both so ’50s retro-looking they could easily make a “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel†cameo without looking out of place).
In the second category were airy dresses, pale green slip dresses, tiered floral-festooned frocks and a lot of feathered pieces: off-the-shoulder ankle-length gowns in oily blue, inky black or dove gray, and our hands-down favorite, a babydoll dress composed entirely of sky blue feathers.
Accessorizing many of the looks were hats by Stephen Jones Millinery that managed to perfectly mirror the contrasting elements of the collection — sparkly rib-knit caps adorned with feathers, sometimes a single one sprouting skyward and sometimes a flock of them lying back against the head.
From start to finish, Jacobs’ fallen-angel-focused fall and winter 2019 collection was a thing of great — if loneliness-inducing — beauty. And for that, he definitely gets a fashion-week feather in his cap.
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