As I have expressed here many times, clear is my favorite color, so imagine my delight when I noticed it has already appeared twice so far on the runway this New York Fashion Week. The fashion world is finally catching up to the splendor of synthetic see-through, as promoted by ‘60s go-go dancers, exotic supply websites, your dry cleaner and Simone Rochas around the globe!
Its most glorious, and glorified, presence was at Wednesday night’s VFiles showcase in the collection of Song Seoyoon, the Seoul-born/New York-based designer who, earlier this year, landed in the finals of the Parsons x Kering Empowering Imagination competition for her work with “wearable garment bags”—which is to say, clear plastic as intellectual and visually pleasing textile. (NO WORD ON SWEAT FACTOR, BUT BEAUTY IS PAIN.)
On the VFiles runway, the models wore casual sportswear in angular, unexpected cuts and pattern/hue combinations that brought to mind this generation’s obsession with culture-jamming, or a version of it, iconic logos. Slinky cut slip-gowns and snipped-apart pinstripe “suits” seemed to demystify the actual process of garment manufacturing, and their encasement in what Song identified as wearable garment bags added a layer of distance—of “don’t touch”—to the creation. (“The mood… is informed by the reconciliation between opposite forces: Apollonian and Dionysian, high-end and low-end, fake and genuine,” Song told Vogue in May. “Each look is covered by wearable garment bags to exchange the value of these two opposites, by letting a sheet of cheap plastic distract the viewer’s attention from the finished garment.”)