Spring 2005 Men's Collections

I guess we’re all done with the Spring 2005 collections after last week's New York’s annual fashion week.

A really interesting article to answer your nagging questions regarding the purpose of this event. Some quotations that capture the gist of the article:

Simply put, fashion week initiates the two major seasons—fall and spring—in which designers present their new collections for the fashion press, retail buyers, and others with influence in the fashion world. However, fashion week, while often seeming like a business convention, is not solely about business. It means something different depending on your place in the fashion world.

Paradoxically, the more prestigious a show, the less money the designer may have to shell out: Marc Jacobs is rumored to never pay models, who consider it a badge of honor to walk his runway, whereas more commercial houses, say Kenneth Cole, have to pay up when they don't have much status to trade on.

Remember that fashion and clothes are not the same thing: Clothes keep you from being naked or cold, and pockets provide a place for your house keys. Fashion, when it's good, sends the imagination racing and speaks for the wearer's dreams in a way words can't.

Fashion is both democratic and exclusive. Some fashion is meant for broad audiences—New York showman-extraordinaire Isaac Mizrahi, for example, has revived his defunct high-priced label by designing clothes for Target—and some—like the extreme styles of Nicolas Ghesquiere's work for Balenciaga—is frankly not intended for uneducated eyes.Fashion is a community as well as a business, and communities have their own language.

On the other hand, it happens all too often that runway shows are filled with high jinks for high jinks' sake. Fashion has become entertainment, and so the thinking of many designers goes like this: Zany looks will get the attention of TV producers or stylists with celebrity access (and getting the name out there equals business success). Shenanigans like silly hairdos, exaggerated makeup, or overzealous styling can also hide a lack of skill or true ideas.

The larger issue, however, is that fashion is a big business, and it has suffered from overexposure. What was once the province of an elite and limited audience is now scrutinized on the red carpet and in tabloids at a rate that forces cheap attempts at keeping up with news cycles that move faster than fashion's own natural seasonal reinvention. The industry, of course, has invited the attention. Hype, the theory goes, means profit. But when there are hours of fashion television that need programming and costly tents to fill, no serious fashion professional would deny that much of what gets shown is an embarrassment.

Every show wants the top models, and there is often a tug of war over certain stars when shows overlap. In the end, a model's agent determines the better career move. Relationships—between agents, designers, the modeling agencies, and the models themselves—play a big part in assembling the ideal cast.

I'm no expert on this but, after witnessing the spring collections, I think that fashion's new message is in the mix: a combustion of pattern and texture, precious with plain, clothes for day and night. Head-to-toe allegiance to a single designer's look is a thing of the past. Tom Ford's decision to step down from his post as creative director of Gucci this April brings to an end an era in which fashion was defined by status rather than a spontaneous personal style.

Color is one of the big stories of this season's menswear shows. I’ve seen a number of outfits that put acid tones of orange, pink, green, and violet against navy, black, and khaki. My top five collections, as featured on style.com, are:

Marc by Marc Jacobs : colorful, energetic and casual
Alexander McQueen : colorful, sensual and creative
John Galliano: colorful, creative and spectacular
Versace: colorful, elegant and well-tailored
Tommy Hilfiger: colorful, simple and classy

That said, I need to go shopping to buy stuff for the fall, which means that I need dough, which means that I need to start work. Or maybe i should just move to NY and find me a rich sugar-daddy. Either way, self-motivation is on a high.