London Fashion Week: Pugh's Eschatology

One of the best things about London is its tendency to magnify pocket subcultures that completely baffle the generation immediately preceding. In the '60s it was the Mods and Rockers, in the '70s the punks, and in the late '80s the club kids. The "club kids" tag has a wholesome, Babes in Arms feel to it, as if "club kids" are the denizens of the local soda fountain whom Mickey and Judy round up to put on a backyard show.

London's club kids are anything but naïfs in overalls. Their creative derring-do is often responsible for stylistic crazes that inspire tomorrow's runway looks, at least as concerns fashion's young Turks. By the time these trends reach the High Street, they are several months out of date.

As the Brits are wont to say, it's not bloody likely that most of Gareth Pugh's latest collection will turn up at Top Shop. Pugh, the undisputed star of fashion-as-cinema, released another costume phantasm that left one feeling as if one had gone to the movies, fallen asleep, and had a petrifying nightmare brought on by ingesting unpopped popcorn.

This is not as disagreeable as it sounds. Pugh knows how to put on a show, and as a result his are the hottest tickets in town. In the category of short feature, Pugh reigns über alles. He's an emo-coiffed club kid inspired by other club kids, all of whom must share a fascination with cinematic terror.

The Autumn/Winter 2008 collection drew heavily on a Hollywood classic that only became popular 20 years after its release. A horror movie cloaked as a morality tale, The Wizard of Oz terrified generation after generation of children with its flying monkeys and monosyllabically chanting Winkie Guards.

As far as universal fright-referents go, the monkeys and Winkies of The Wizard of Oz rank right up there with the bogeyman, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. A headdress and flared skirt from the Spring 2008 collection turn out to have been a sign of things to come. The connection to the film wasn't obvious in September. In hindsight, one was seeing a trailer for a coming attraction.

The coming attraction more than repaid the film(s) that inspired it, although in only one instance was the interpretation fairly explicit. In that look, a Winkie cross-bred with a monkey; the result was a fur dress (or greatcoat, who can tell?) with a severely flared skirt. In another, Pugh placed the monkey's fur as a shrug on a zip-front, two-toned dress that had its provenance not in Hollywood but in the Mugler-Montana continuum.

Then there were fractal collars, sleeves, and skirts, as Pugh worked with his trademark modularity and burst volumes. An ominous-looking suit and two dresses that appeared to be made of recycled aluminum turned out to be made of zippers. The designer's eye for geometry must be noted; the designs were precision mutations when they could just as easily have been malformations.

Here is where we come to the eternal, and eternally impenetrable question of what constitutes fashion. The way Chanel had it, "A fashion that goes out of fashion overnight is a distraction, not a fashion." But who are we to say whether what Pugh did for autumn will disappear by tomorrow morning? Both the flared skirts and zippered material could well show up in a suburban mall, but how much does indirect reference count towards qualification?

Pugh's spectacles tend more towards technical wizardry than they do to dramatic narrative. Although high entertainment, they aren't exactly Stanislavkian. Psychological truth and emotional life are subjugated in favor of special effects. This leads to a feeling that what appears on the runway has been outsourced by a Hollywood costume department. In turn, the objective of the work seems to lie in conspicuousness, i. e. how visible it is. Considering Pugh's attachment to the club scene, this is defensible; visibility and recognition are of utmost importance.

For the sake of argument, let's say that adults have demands that often render them serious and incapable of having child-like fun (a terrible proposition). As adults, we may have forgotten that fear can be not just terrifying but also thrilling. Hollywood has exploited this successfully and so has Pugh. We may well have outgrown and rationalized our early fears so that they are no longer points of reference. We've replaced them with far worse things that we'd never dream of using as a basis for fashion. So what if what Pugh sent down the runway was a teenage eschatology? When was the last time you tried to save humankind from warrior cyborgs?

It was the end of the world, and fifteen bucks buys you a front-row seat. At the local multiplex, that is. Don't forget to bring your lightsaber.