SWAY INTO SHAPES AND FORMS FOR 2020 FALL/WINTER

 

                 

Trace a line to its origin.  

                                 

What do you see?    A triangle.                              

Now a diamond. 

Lines form shapes. 

Criss-cross a pair and you draw an X.  See how X marks the spot and catches our eyes.  Drag and pick any lines that design motley shapes:  cones, cubes, squares, diamonds, triangles, trapezium. 

 

Now arrange them in an order suited to your taste.

 

 

                             

 

  Or you can arrange it vertically.

 

Motley.  Colors + Shapes = Draws our eyes to the pattern.  Geometric shapes have been fashionable since Modern Art popped up in the 1950s.  Simplified geometric forms splashed onto the art scene since the mid-twentieth century.  On garments, it renovates simple apparels into romanticized, glamorized forms.  And because forms makes us à la mode, we don them.  Shapes are in vogue for fall 2020.

  

Chloe 2020 Fall/Winter

Chloe fall/winter 20-21 sets up against a background of a gentle chorus and a soliloquy of a low, deep female voice.  The runway is set with pillars like the Byzantine era built of gold, copper, and bronze tones.  And models sweep the fall 2020 runway. 

 

Chloe's light fall dress in light biscuit

Heat your oven up low or high to bake/toast a variety:  bagel, biscuits, baguettes, marble cakes.  Fall apparels flow in feathery blouses, wavering skirts, careening dresses, and relaxing pants.  Their colors have been tempered down in mellow browns:  soft beige, light biscuit, butter crème, sheen khakis, woody browns, chocolate browns.  Yummm . . . mellow browns just give me an appetite for the bakery.  In any shape or form, the browns warm up mellow fall’s tones.         

Chloe's beige-to-browns Fall 2020

Careening dresses have printed patterns —graphic cubes or mini-checkered boxes—on a thin, silky fabric which sways gently side-by-side as models stroll down the runway.  Argyle patterns on knitted tops and dresses fascinate our interests by its design and color.  The colors on the patterns complement one another.   One or two dresses have a sketched on black-and-white drawings as part of its design.  Fall skirts and dresses have a light, flimsy, feminine texture but the jackets are encased in heavy fabrics.  Brown jackets have four pockets at the front that adds to the wool’s heavy texture which reminds us this is fall after all. 

 

Bomber jackets have been paired with trousers for an urban street wear.  High-waist denim pants and long skirts are another casual street wear.  Long skirts on this fall’s Chloe collection are deeply slit in the front for a sexy, feminine wear.  The collection has models wear combat boots, loafers, and slip on shoes.

Alexander McQueen's Neo-Geo-shaped coat and tunic.

Alexander McQueen's mosaic of colored geometrics

Alexander McQueen's faded line patterns

Alexander McQueen’s fall/winter 2020 has a new mosaic of modern geometric patterns sorted onto clothes.  Checker works comprised in a kaleidoscope of ink whites, hot reds, dreamy lilacs, solid blacks sketched onto suits and coats.  Like cut-and-pasted mosaic, it renews jackets and coats up a notch on the modern scale.  A simple thick stroke is all it takes to stress a mark on a design.  Bold black lines or a single stripe updates a fresh, new look to suits, coats, jackets.  And the suits makes a women charter districts across states.  They exude authority.

 

McQueen’s collection also has dot patterns like latticed garden entryway on the front of dresses or a French colonial.  Draw on knitted crochet dress or a transparent dress with bold red lines which only defines its design.       

  

 

Dan Flavin's light fixtures

 

 Beams of neon halogen or florescent lights criss-cross, intersect and vibrates, emitting high frequency ionic energy onto the contemporary scene.  (Dan Flavin's florescent tubes sculpture in the 1970s is a good example.)  But it has not on clothes.  T-shirts can glow in the dark but they are not built to light up.  Innovative technology has not yet advanced us that far.  Spectrum of lights on dark settings changes a viewer’s experience.  (Gene Davis's multicolored canvas shows how the color red, a warm color, protrudes forward while the cold colors blue, green, purple recede in the background.)  Most people have seen lights-at-work at night concerts.  (Justin Timberlake concerts often use special effect lighting on stage.)  Hologram lights spark up a fashion show, emitting electrifying octane energy on the runway. 

 

Gene Davis's multi-colored stripes on canvas

Ralph & Russo diagonal lined coat with attached shawl wrap

Ralph & Russo's patterned coat

Ralph & Russo Neo-Geo-patterned coat

Ralph & Russo draws filmy lines on fall’s jackets and coats that similarly capture a unique thread in the pattern.  Cubic patterns in hot pinks on a darker canvas of neutral taupe and grays pop this warm pink on suits or coats.  Pink cubic patterns run straight diagonally or criss-cross at rough angles, rendering a casual look for coats.  Some of Russo’s coats have a large shawl design which runs down from the neck onto shoulders, wrapping a woman’s upper body for cold winter months.  The shawl stretches out at longer lengths at nearly a size of a cape.  The same goes for elongated cable scarves that hang down by women’s legs.  Russo’s fall collection uniquely attaches shawl/stole onto coats.  A combination of two onto one, I like the newly added touch.

 

Givenchy's Fall/Winter 2020-21

Givency’s show is set on a dimly lit room which casts circular patterns consecutively on the runway.  The lighting itself presents Givenchy as it is.  The show begins on a collection of formal attires, an assorted variety of coats and suits.  And I must say Givenchy represents evening wears.  Coats have heavy structures by their designs and some are designed with hyperbolized shoulders, an architect of modern fashion that forms by a construction of loose, boxy outlines onto the women’s frame. 

 

Givenchy's highly structured jackets and coats

Givenchy's feather attires

Soft, flowing fall dresses in chiffon waver as models walk the runway.  Small cut-out geo-patterns scatter onto dresses, stressing a modern take on a classic long dress.  Innovative designs immediately follow.  Risk-taking designs unify Givenchy’s skirts, tops, dresses by one cardinal rule:  feathers.  Ruft, fluff, tuft your feathers.  Feathers attached onto skirts and dresses—thick shaggy manes, round cut-outs, or fringed tiered layers modernize an otherwise classic evening wear.  Givenchy is the returning winner of upscale evening attire. 

 

Oscar de la Renta's Fall/Winter 2020-21

Oscar de la Renta's Royal Blue Dress

Oscar de la Renta's slinky or svelte cocktail dresses

Oscar de la Renta’s fall/winter collection has an assorted nuance covering varieties of dresses at different shades on the neckline and hemline:  mini-bubble skirts, bubble skirts with long trains, asymmetrical, strapless, semi-sweetheart, round neck, plunging neckline.  Few have accented transparent meshes which rise up to a woman’s nape, shaping an industrial vibe —New York skyscraper, the Empire State building.  De la Renta’s dresses have fun, flirty, whimsical styles by small accents that add to the dresses—tulip petal shoulders with a cut that slits near the insides lining on a sea-kelp-algae dress; loose- hanging shimmering silver fringe dress; glittering gold fringe dress; sparkly jeweled encrusted embroidery on dresses.  Though few dresses in de la Renta’s fall collection has geometric patterns, the one form which stood out:  triangles.

 

 

 Triangles aligned in rows intensify a simple white geometric shape on a colored contrast of sea-kelp-algae.  

Saint Laurent's baby blue jacket paired with elastic black vinyl pants

Saint Laurent's sportswear 

Saint Laurent's sportswear in asphalt grey and mustard mimosa

Saint Laurent's sheer black blouse

Picture a pitch dark room lit only by the spotlight.  Then the spotlight follows models as they walk in darkness, contouring silhouettes of their shapes onto shadowed figures on the wall.  No, this is not an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  This is Saint Laurent’s show.  Laurent is a classic chic sportswear especially on jackets.  Six round-gold-buttoned jackets rest right at the hip.  These jackets come in assorted color varieties:  mustard mimosa, magnetic blue, baby blue, Egyptian camels, maple brown, sky grey, Granny Smith lime, sapphire blue, fuchia red.  Paired with skinny black, vinyl-latex pants or accessorized with a 22-carat gold chain on the décolleté, you change the look of the ensemble based on how you want to wear them.  A mix of classic chic matched with a hip, urbane rocky edge collides when jackets are paired with shiny vinyl pants.  Sharp-edge black bands accent the collar on few of these jackets, signifying a Saint Laurent’s jacket.  Bold black lines upgrades a black-and-white checkered jacket compared to other no-brand names on the rack.  Just a small touch of a thick black line goes a long way in creating a selling look.         

 

Valentino's deeper-cut black top and skirt

Valentino's black robe with a high-waist tie-around wrap

Valentino's long sheer black dress

Valentino fall collection has series of black ensembles that vary from sheer, light to woven cottony fabrics:  transparent blouses, sheer layered dresses, soft petal shoulders, heavier shimmery jewel-encrusted dresses, woven fish net, loose-fitting plunging V-necks, round t-shirt neck dress, long robes, glittering charcoal grey-black with sparkling specks of white. 

 

Shades of material range light to heavier cotton and their cuts vary —boat necks, low-cut semi-sweethearts, and wide-shoulders construction.  Sandy nudes come in a clean halter dress, a simple robe dress, and embroidered sheer shells which cast a soft, leafy page than thicker hard enameled covers of winter coats.

 

Chanel's 2020-21 fall/winter casual sportswear

Chanel's Fall/Winter 2020-21

Chanel's 2020-21 Fall/Winter ensembles

Chanel’s 2020 fall/winter pret-à-porter include suits, dresses, jackets, coats.  Set on a stage of imitated icebergs with white mists, Chanel’s pret-à-porters has a wide collection.  The suits are worn straight and loose and one example that illustrates this is a clean pastel lime suit.  The buttons on the jackets and suits vary at the center or by military design that aligns buttons closely together by two parallel columns.  Few tops have hyperbolized oval shoulders sculpting women’s shoulders for a distinctly modern look.  Black-and-white tops and skirts add to the typical street wear.  Chanel’s signature of broken dashes on a black dress or white-and-black patterns on a dress marks its design.      

 

Versace's Fall/Winter 2020-21 eclectic collection

Versace's Fall/Winter 2020-21 colored and patterned ensembles

Versace's neon lime green cocktail dress

Versace's menswear

Versace's tiger-striped fur coat

Versace's black blazer over slit black top and short flared skirt

Versace’s runway is unique by a display of a large screen on a wall that plays continuous images of copper-toned alloys.  Turn up the Fahrenheit because the room gets hot from images on screen.  Versace’s fall collection starts with clean black hard-edged lines in a modern black jacket over a crisp, modern black dress marked by a slit cut horizontally above the chest.  Versace casual wears vary —cropped red bubble jacket, striped pants, striped denim and jackets, paisley prints, short skirts with wavy folds, short metallic silver party dresses, shirts and dresses with bright mix of reds-blues-whites stripes or blocks.  Shades on bold stripes are minimal and reduced to three or four tones—blues and browns lining up for bold thick stripes.  Versace’s design is wildly eclectic and up-to-date modern compared to other conventional designs and a large faux coat illustrates this.  Contour lines resembling tiger marks envelop over coats fit for a rock star like Kid Rock.  Men’s casual shirts have bold bands and thinner stripes, an overall young, hip look for men and women.  The casual sportswear is a second cousin to Tommy Hilfiger’s sportswear, a must-have for the black hip-hop gang who first adorned his color-coordinated fashionable track suits.  Whichever its shapes and sizes, it has a newly updated take for fashion-forwards this fall through winter.