Marc Jacobs’s Swipe at Conservative Values
That may not be what Jacobs intended with this stirring show, but that’s his rare power all the same.
Last night, a cool summer evening after the storms, Marc Jacobs held his latest show at the Public Library, and I could almost imagine it was the 1960s, and we were at a country-club dance on Long Island or a cotillion in the South. The opening white dresses, in crisp cotton and eyelet, with full skirts, literally floated away from the body. The final trio of gowns recalled the sedate princess style — a bow at the waist, the long white gloves — worn by millions of women in the ’60s and early ’70s. I thought of the Nixon daughters, Tricia and Julie.
The show’s conservative styles, including boxy little suits and babydoll dresses with Peter Pan collars, belong not merely to the Establishment elite but also to a period of intense political and cultural change, ignited by the Free Speech Movement, the horrors of the Vietnam War, the civil-rights movement, and the fight by women for equality. With the western world again at some kind of juncture, and liberal values losing ground, Jacobs’s clothes could be read as a mockery of conservatism, its prison of nostalgia.
Indeed, there was nothing straight about Jacobs’s designs. Those opening white dresses, including one with its skirt partially flipped in the air, as if caught in a twirl, looked as frozen as the figures at Madame Tussauds. Even the models’ hairdos looked stuck in time, lacquered down; and their pastel eyeshadow patches with long black lashes recalled Holly Golightly’s goofy nightshade in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Notice that many of the styles had something deliberately off about them: The rear of one skirt was hiked up, as if the model were pulling down the elastic of her underpants, or a neckline was a bit wonky in shape, or the shoulders of suit or sweater were hunched forward. A case of bad posture? Or a refusal to obey or conform?
“We tried not to overthink anything,” Jacobs said afterward. He had on jeans, a white shirt, and extra-long bejeweled nails. Be that as it may, Jacobs and his studio team had a lot on their minds. They also allow room for interpretation, which for me is one of the most exciting things about his work of the past seven or eight years. He seldom does the backstage post-show interview nowadays. Instead, he offers a few words in his press notes.
This time, he said: “While the future remains unwritten, I am steadfast in my daily practice of choosing love over hate, faith over fear and finding pause in reflection. I believe in living with authenticity — free from validation and permission of absurd conservatism, and societal norms.” He noted that people use fashion to express their identities and sense of beauty. In short, fashion is “Joy, period.”
It was hard not to see the collection as both bold and a swipe at conservative attitudes, including “quiet luxury.” Much of the boldness came from the intense colors — the deep blues, pinks, and reds, often combined together or with a jolt of chartreuse or stark white. One outfit, a white over-scaled jacket with a bright-red A-line skirt and turquoise pumps with turned-up elf toes, seemed a riff on flag colors, with a twist provided by the shoes, and Fourth of July gatherings. An off-the-shoulder pink gingham top with a denim skirt was pure Daisy Mae, a character in the Dogpatch cartoon strip.
In a way, many of the shapes were cartoonish, but not without a point. Nor without beauty and a genuinely sweet innocence. As in his previous stellar collection, shown in February, Jacobs constructed some of the clothes with a built-in slouch and others so that they stood away from the body. In his new collection, even a chaste, old-style bikini stood away from the body a bit. It was an interesting effect. It made me think of the imperfect fit of a paper doll’s dresses. But it was also a palimpsest of some of Jacobs’s earlier styles and attitudes that many people don’t wish to return to. That may not be what Jacobs intended with this stirring show, but that’s his rare power all the same.