J.W. Anderson
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REVIEW
COMPLETE COLLECTION
LONDON, September 17, 2011
By Tim Blanks
Plucking order from chaos is the challenge many artists set themselves. With a Spring show that will likely be remembered as his breakthrough to a bigger time, Jonathan Anderson often reversed that idea, injecting chaos into the ordered precision of classic dress codes. Not only reversing, but at times turning it upside down. Though "a schoolgirl raised by nuns, finally escaping the convent" was the inspiration he claimed, the sound of musicals was drowned out by his deliciously warped dissection of the quotidian uniforms of both the male and the female of the species. For example, the striped cotton of a man's shirt (one of the plainest menswear clichés) was transformed into a fitted jacket patched with leather and matched with slim pants, both laced as efficiently as any dominatrix's gear. The concept of the cardigan was flipped and stretched into a dress with trailing sleeves as tails. And the schoolgirl's pleated kilt was rendered in brown leather and attached to a perforated vest to make an elongated, sleekly athletic waistcoat.The interweaving of menswear and womenswear is an Anderson signature, like the baggy pleated pants paired with a metallic tabard that asymmetrically wrapped around and defined the model's torso. That tabard also pointed to something equally typical: a collage quality influenced by the artist Robert Rauschenberg. The handcrafted effect Anderson sought looked random, even clumsy, at times, especially with panels of mesh that were asymmetrically attached to a precise top and pleated navy skirt. But when his elevation of the handmade succeeded, it was spectacular. The zigzag knits and the irresistible roadrunner print could be construed as particularly charming takes on the season's tribal tendencies. Even better: the lengths of laboriously woven leather links that he used as a bib or a trailing drape over one of those upside-down cardigan dresses. They had a seductive meshlike fluidity, but they were also romantic, in an odd neo-medieval way. Like the swatch of synthetic swan feathers that covered the back of a silk waistcoat. Just the ticket for a runaway convent girl's dreams.
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Spring 2012 Ready-to-Wear
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