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February 7, 2008 8:56 am
As his nomination for this year’s Fashion Group International Rising Star Award confirmed, Christian Cota’s future in fashion looks bright. But for his sophomore season, the designer is reaching back into the past. As Cota explains, the Fall 2008 collection he’s presenting at Espace this afternoon channels the palimpsest nature of vintage clothes. “I think the best way to convey the sense of the season is to tell the story I’ve been telling myself,” says Cota. “I’ve been imagining a girl at a boarding school in France who stumbles upon a trunk that belonged to a notorious demimondaine, Madame de Tourbey. And as much as that discovery pulls her back into history, it also pulls de Tourbey’s wardrobe into the present, as the girl begins to integrate the clothes into her day-to-day life.” With that story in mind, Cota references gothic and Belle Epoque details such as pouf sleeves and high necks, but uses couture fabrics and his strong sense of the surreal to suggest time’s dislocating effect. “Time changes things,” the designer says. “Photographs fade and blister, fabrics begin to disintegrate, memories distort. That’s the larger story I wanted to tell, but elegantly, and in a new way.”
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