At the autumn/winter 06 shows in Milan, I set myself a rule: if it wasn't modern, I wasn't interested. As soon as a designer or press release cited the influence of a decade, movie, musician or any other cliché of masculine dress, I stopped considering its potential as a force for change. I was looking at it only as clothes.
But most of what was shown was referential: Mozart, vampires, English aristocracy, The Libertine (the Johnny Depp movie), the Libertines (belated nod to Doherty's launch pad), etc. Sometimes the clothes were well-made, but so what? "Design" should involve some thought about contemporary circumstances. Dress-up used to have the power to shock, but there's no subversion any more in adopting high-ranking clothes for a degenerate lifestyle. And, yes, I mean military jackets.
This is turning into some battle, because the shows were either entirely costume or entirely modern. On our side (I presume we're on the same one): Raf Simons at Jil Sander, Italo Zuchelli at Calvin Klein, Tomas Maier at Bottega Veneta, and Mrs Prada at Miu Miu. This last had such strong vision: short jackets, some with belts strapped across the chest; contour-following, long-bodied knits that follow the thinking of summer's muscle sweaters; high, roomy tops of trousers in grey and black. My notes stop there because if you weren't front row, you couldn't see below the models' waists. Talk afterwards was of weird trousers: what I saw online was exciting, with many tightening up around the calf. It all looked unfamiliar, which alone made it modern.
Question to mull over: how do you differentiate between modern, meaning now, and modernism, the early 20th-century movement that's being celebrated at the V&A in a few months? Can modernity ever mean anything actually modern?
· Charlie Porter is associate editor of GQ (m-f-a-s@hotmail.com).
