This season you have to show some skin! Animal skin that is. Summer 2013 is all about exotic leathers combined into sleek, modern geometric patterns and clean linear lines. Proenza Schouler echoed the season’s most important trend by collaging exotic eel and python skin with light weight perforated leather in high-def colors like yellow, neon green, aqua, red and electric blue.
The first looks on the runway burst upon the retinas in a striking yellow and green, brightly yoked sleeveless python vest partnered with a white hip slung, gusseted skirt and thick, black leather open-toe sandals. A wildly intense array of bold colors was set beneath streaks of black, and brightly color panels that had the semblance and feel of pop art. In fact, all the dresses, jackets, and skirts featured densely perforated leather in a pinhole sports jersey pattern that comprised a futuristic form. The futuristic, space-age-sport concept was further hammered home with body conscious, zippered tennis dresses in neon green or white leather with a trumpet skirt.
Photo prints were a prominent theme for spring/summer, but Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez assembled images like crowd scenes and kids in a pool into abstract imagery by cutting the images into strips and assembling them diagonally across the body. The images coupled with color blocked eel, brightly dyed python, and leather cut in geometric patterns, graced the likes of sheath dresses, skirts and jackets alike.
Patchwork caban coats with rounded shoulders in fire engine red with contrasting black weft strips or red perforated leather with panels of python in gray with black trim enveloped the models. Beneath each jacket was an A-line skirt in contrasting red, black, white, or a conglomeration of all three.
Andy Warhol himself would have approved of the pop art motif embraced by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. Inspired by Gerhard Richter, the duo used graphics pulled from random images on Tumblr, and aggregated them into a discordant collages. The art depicted on the skirts, dresses, and tees, referenced the chaos of information in excess.
To close the show a series of chiffon, bias cut dresses in abstract black and jewel toned prints, whispered a breath of boho ease into an otherwise structured collection. Tank style basket woven dresses with diagonal panels of blue and green silk had pictorial weft strips stitched across the body creating a pixilated effect.
All in all, an exciting new direction stemming from the erratic complexity of a new technological era.
