(Philipp)PLEIN & (Alexander) WANG fall 2018

Wang

Well he almost fooled me into thinking he had grown up and given up on contemporary sportswear and finally moved in to the big leagues with grown up clothes. WRONG! Every time I saw those circular pockets, all I could think of were the speakers on one of the old boom boxes. Then of course he lapses back into his hot pants, odd layering and tricked out overly zippered accoutrements. 

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One does have to wonder if the collection had been shown without the supposedly uber trendy pieces and embellishments … would this be a collection to rank among the young crop of designers like Vaccarello or Vauthier and such. Think about it … edit and restraint once again come to mind

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 Plein

 Plein de rien! Take away the logo, the over the top accessories and the showmanship and what exactly do you have here. Discuss amongst yourselves

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Philipp Plein men's spring 2018

Grease meets Bye Bye Birdie meets The Wild One …   NASCAR meets WWF …  forelock meets flame meets spill curl… Jeremy Scott meets Philipp Plein meets Hedi Slimane meets Alessandro Michele … Rizzo meets Kenickie … Conrad Birdie meets Danny Zuko … it is fashion according to Plein’s whim of the moment

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The clothes, after the 10^th variation on a theme....  it all becomes yawn worthy at best

The show is a spectacle which is fine as the clothes take a back seat to the totality of it all 

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There’s no trend, no real fashion here ...  just a lot of wildly expensive clothes aimed at…  well…  actually very rich people who have nothing but money and a need to spend it on silly overpriced shit and think they are hot stuff

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There are a few consistencies each season ... the de rigeur croco jacket as well as leather and of course the studs and jeans….  Story over

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As they say at a crime scene when a crowd starts to gather … nothing to see here keep moving

pre-fall 2016 Philipp Plein & BOSS

Philipp Plein took a 180 this season as it is possible he had exhausted the world’s stud supply with his previous collections or possibly he has decided that he needs to go a more commercial route. For the most part, gone are the studs and gone are the hard core biker chick/rocker girl looks that previously flooded his collections and even the skull has all but disappeared . Don’t get me wrong, he hasn’t abandoned his DNA as much as he has just massaged it and interpreted that DNA in a different way; less overt sexy and a lot less costumey or maybe hookerish. Some of the shapes will be familiar, some much more grown up and wearable and some new. There is a definite fascination with lace, with butterflies and with his signature prints. What will be most interesting is if this is a precursor to what is to come or if this is just a one shot wonder.

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Jason Wu has decided that BOSS is the 21^st century’s answer to the original Jil Sander. It is spare, minimal, hard edged, rather commercial and with a limited color palette. There is this aura of architectural and somewhat of a sterile feeling that comes with such minimalism. Maybe he is right to take this tack as the fashion world is starting to look like the linen department with tonnage of white sheets turned into wearing apparel and when so many collections look they have been designed by one communal design team. One can say it is wearable but certainly not exciting but just maybe he has taken to ascribe to the original genesis of early fall and that was to sell clothes with no fanfare and no design fireworks. Pre-fall was the appetizer to the regular Fall seaon which is the course dinner.

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Philipp Plein fall 2015 MFW

Here is what Plein had to say when he showed his last men’s collection……."We are selling, this is the point. If I wasn't selling, then I wouldn't be here. I am not here to please the people of the press…I am a customer boy. I am a working-class hero. I am not here to make you guys happy; I am here to make the customer happy. They pay my bills. They make all this happen."

When a designer reaches this plateau of self-understanding and has the realization that the press really doesn’t matter in the general scheme of things, it is only then that he can truly push forward. It is an extremely rare moment of... Hubris? … Arrogance?? … Or is it just the simple reality that this designer speaks his mind with such candor. KUDOS!! to you for speaking the truth.

It has been said countless times here that press /media acknowledgements and acceptances do not sell clothes. Clothes sell clothes. Plein’s clothes appeal to his clientele and he has the empire to prove it. Success will come to those whose clothes sell and not to those who only get the nod from the so called media elite. It is the consumer who has the final word ... not this or that sunglassed editor or some no clue critic whose resume is either 20 minutes long or never worked a day in their lives in the trenches of fashion.

The bottom line here is that there is a choice for any writer or critic and that is ... do you simply offer a FACTUAL accounting of what you see or do you offer a supposedly unbiased educated assessment/opinion of what you have seen? For decades critics were a somewhat scholarly lot who based their articles on the history of fashion and offered their evaluations and now we have so called critics who are more interested in speaking of the venue, the front row and these misguided and delusional inspirations that bear no relation to a collection. HOLD ON TO THIS THOUGHT!

Here comes PP who says ... you know what .... this is what I do and this is who I am and I wanna have a good time doing it. I tip my hat to you Philipp Plein. The world of fashion could use a hard dose of reality so maybe you are the one to show them the way.

PS.. if you were hoping for a review .. not happening today… this is just a report and an assessment of a man with an unapologetic approach to fashion !

Philipp Plein Spring 2015 men's

One of the great things about fashion is that it can be full of surprises. In what universe might you think that the words restraint, conservative, sportif and soigne would ever be applied to a collection of Philipp Plein? In other words ... a pig just flew by my window … again!

Please don’t get the wrong impression that Mr. Plein has deserted the DNA and vocabulary that catapulted him to fame and success but what he has done is to rein it in to a much more palatable point where the over the top quotient has been drastically reduced. You might think I am describing a drastically more sedate collection than in the past when it fact what you get to see is Plein shining by doing what he does best and that is showing  off. Designers design!!

The Spring collection is rife with salable, that awful word again,  signature Plein and offers a view of  the designer without all the bells and whistles that we are accustomed to seeing each season. There are the obligatory lacerated jeans and the plentiful use of croco as well as oceans of studs and rock star flourishes but what suddenly becomes blatantly apparent here is that here are real clothes that don’t hide behind the embellishments. I was enamored with the denim blazers, the tennis and striped sweaters, the use of bouillon emblems and the vast selection of jackets. Even the signature skull and cross bones has been downplayed to great effect as if mimicking those embroidered pants from Brooks Brothers of long ago. His whole take on Spring is very refreshing with nauticals and red, white and blue and denims.

I would like to say I am impressed with this collection and hope that it is a harbinger of what’s to come in the future. Mr. Plein has surely done his homework and he has tamed his designs without diluting or redefining who he is and that would be a big BRAVO to him! Without question, he chose a far more difficult path than a total reinvention and he pulled it off seamlessly.

PS  … Philipp Plein is coming to a lucky city near you … very soon …. Hint …. Bi-coastal!