What’s in an Idea, Anyway?

I was leaving a show early yesterday and overhead an editor tell her friend that she’s bored with the fashion.

I overhear this at least once every season.

On occasion, I am the one saying it.

The editors come and they yell, “Give me a fad!”

The designers, I think, want to comply but have to bear in mind that without the continuation of ideas from seasons past (these often play a leading role in their collections), the contemporary market that is New York Fashion is at risk. So it goes that the editors yawn, the designers explain esoteric inspiration that is sometimes palpable but often not and then we go forward into Europe. Here’s my question, though (and don’t worry, I’m going to answer it, too): Is it so bad that a single idea should remain and carry itself out over the course of several years?

What if Freud had abandoned his theories — some of which, the basic principles of human psychology — every time the climate changed?

You know what they say, right? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just look to Michael Kors. Yesterday, the purported king of American fashion showed his version of what next spring looks like. He pulled references from the early aughts (How does one know that the 2000s are back? Well, if you’re sitting at a show and feel like you’re watching Julia Stiles painting a clay bowl ca. Ten Things I Hate About You only in a more polished setting wherein she lives on an East Hampton compound, you can rest assured you’ve reached that junction.) — like white ribbed tanks, low slung prairie skirts, thick leather hip belts, ceramic beaded earrings and some case studies in the new-old wedge. He married these to what is always true about Kors: an unflinching sense of fresh Americanism.

I know, what the hell is an unflinching sense of fresh Americanism? It’s those fresh eyes, that sense of purity and cleanliness that is inferred by crisp khaki pants and a silk white blouse, the familiar and reliable idea that is always so clearly an underpinning you can spot at Kors.

Then again, though, you consider guys like Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler who have this impeccable way of taking a very literal idea — one that seeks conversation, new opinion, the kind of reference that could modify it — and translating it to something not just really wearable, or viable, but that changes the way we speak about trends. Last night, the prolific designers showed a black, white and red all over collection that seemingly honored the Spanish Riviera with an opening triad of breezy naval looks that progressed into very smart, very new net dresses which ultimately became a tribute to Flamenco. All replete with ruffles — a leading theme this season. But nothing was so literal (how many collections have you seen to be inspired by Flamenco from the Mediterranean?) that even through its technical newness, you smell the old and think to yourself, Give me a fad.

Evidently, it seems the lasting ideas are those that are put out there and discussed to ultimately create new progeny, new theories and even trick you into believing that they are new ideas.

Photographs via Vogue Runway and NowFashion.com

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