aNewDomain — One thing is clear after a tour of Fashion Week catwalks this week, fashion is going boldly where mankind has been only once before. That was in the 1960s, at the peak of the US-Soviet space race.
And judging from the looks of countless Fashion Week 2017 shows in Milan, Stockholm, Berlin, London, Paris and New York, there’s a new space revolution going on. Or maybe it’s just a new space craze. Either way, it’s everywhere.
From haute couture houses of Dolce & Gabbana, Hussein Chalayan, Zuhair Murad, Valenntino, Gucci and Chanel, to the edgier designers of Berlin, Soho and Stockholm, there’s a super-galactic look, fabric or strange sci-fi backdrop going down the aisles of every Fashion Week catwalk — or so it seems.
Take Chanel. It kicked off the year back in January with a space-themed extravaganza of a show. The whole thing culminated in an onstage rocket launch to the tune of Elton John’s Rocketman for its philosophy. (It isn’t as cheesy as it sounds, I swear it.) Check it out for yourself, above.
And some designers were so bold as to take the space fashion thing even further. Take Ken Graham’s Life on Mars show at New York’s Men’s Fashion Week last spring. It starred, and I kid you not, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Bill Nye the Science Guy?
Yes, they donned pieces from his 2018 menswear line. They also played key roles in the show.
The whole collection, says Graham, was based on Aldrin’s projection that humans would be able to land people on Mars by 2035.
That sort of explains why Nye narrated a visual journey to Mars during the show, in case you were wondering. I know I was. It turned out to be nowhere as corny as it sounds, as you’ll see below.
And Graham was lucky on that score, because he really was playing with dork dynamite here.
It gets better. Because even Aldrin and Nye wearing fantastical coats in weird lighting were nowhere near as trippy as the Star Trek, UFO and dinosaur-themed show Gucci unleashed on the world in July. I would say a lot more about the launch of this Fall/Winter 2017 women and menswear line, but for once words fail me. Behold:
If you like the space look — and I’m assuming you do because otherwise you couldn’t have hung in this post this long — Dolce & Gabbana’s unveiling of its 2017/2018 line at Milan Fashion Week won’t disappoint. And look at that set. It’s gorgeous, no?
Over at Coach, the backdrop looked like Mercury might — spare, silvery and moonless. Here’s its Coach 1941 Spring/Summer 2018 collection from this month’s Paris Fashion Week. Coach, by the way, has been plying space fashion of a different kind, too. It now has a line of NASA-branded purses. Can you make this stuff up? No, you cannot.
John Paul Gaultier, as you might expect if you remember his big Madonna leather bra and corset days, is astronomically crazed, too. At Paris Fashion Week in July, he launched his haute couture 2017/18 line. In a show said to be inspired by the sci fi flick, The Fifth Element, the look was pure royal galactic. Like what you could imagine Luke Skywalker’s royal grandmother might wear to her son’s wedding.
Ah, never mind. Here it is:
Now check out this from Fenty x Puma by Rihanna. Her Spring Summer 2018 lineup, launched last week in New York, is wild — in a good way.
One of my favorite spacey shows came courtesy of the ever-edgy Iris Van Herpen at London Fashion Week back in July.
And here’s the Ralph Russo show that premiered at London’s Fashion Week just a couple of days ago.
Houston designer Alan Gonzalez debuted this a couple of weeks ago.
I saved the weirdest one for last. It’s Viktor Rolf’s rollout of his haute couture line for 2018.
What’s behind the new craze for space-themed fashion? Good question. Perhaps it’s that, for the first time in a generation, space exploration is hot again. Rakish, high-flying billionaire adventurers like SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Virgin Galactic’s Sir Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos have made space exploration sexy again.
Or maybe it’s just that we all need an escape from the current nastiness going on in politics and elsewhere. I know I do.
Whatever the reason, it’s back — for now, anyway. Get your glitter when it’s hot, that’s what I say …
Stay tuned for part two of this series on space-crazed Fashion Week 2017 haute couture.
For aNewDomain, I’m Gina Smith.
