The next stop on the Fall fashion train is Paris 2012. The clothes shown over the next few days will be in store for Fall 2012 or in lay terms, these garments will be hitting the racks around mid-June thru September for fall selling and wearing....that is to say provided we don’t have Indian summer until November. So no matter where you shop, be it Barneys, Bergdorf’s, Bloomingdales, Saks, Jeffrey or eponymous boutiques or for that matter anywhere else, you will either be seeing these exact items or be feeling their influence.
What seems to be in short supply here is the original DNA of the brand. No one, but no one cut a suit like Thierry Mugler and in a season of suitings and tailoring, Mugler should have been a perfect fit. (Pun intended)
Mr. Formichetti needs to understand that he is ill equipped to compete so it is better to surrender rather than offer a cheap looking and pale imitation of the original. Yes there are vague soft references to Mr. Mugler but the jazz is not there and that’s what is missing in the collection. Some of the designs are almost there but the construction, execution and silhouette are severely lacking. Formichetti needs to get it out of his head that life is not rock n roll and not a costume party where hipsters are wearing these clothes and thinking they look great…NOT!
The bare bones might exist here with all the architectural seaming, fabrications and flourishes but the most important element is absent and that would be the clearly defined shoulder which was a trademark of the brand and certainly should have appeared in this collection. The rounded softened shapes are not relative to this brand but some of the razor sharp silhouettes we saw in Milan should have found their way here to the Mugler runway. It is not enough to take the elements and create something that you think is emblematic of the brand; you need to solve the equation by taking all the elements and staying true to the brand.
In the Formichetti versus Mugler tug of war, Formichetti always loses his grip because he thinks he understands the DNA of the brand ,which he might, but he has yet to show us that he knows what to do with it. Mugler was extreme while Formichetti is cartoonish. It is strong versus weak. Mugler was a spectacle of fabulous and this is a show of trying too hard and getting nowhere fast. The patterned fabrications are silly here as they bring nothing to the table other than a forced effort to expand the scope of the collection in a far too easy way and with the Formichetti vision for Mugler comes the absence of slick! And if nothing else Mugler is slick and never ever sloppy! Mugler was effortless, this is working too hard to get to the same place.
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