Religion and sex have always gone hand in hand, the
basest instincts transmogrified into spirituality-even martyrdom-by ardent
denial. As a good Catholic boy from Southern Italy, Riccardo Tisci has a finely
tuned sense of the power and allure of both saintliness and sin, but he's never
managed to integrate them quite as successfully as he did in his SS13 show.
He said that "the cult of communion" was his
starting point. A brocade of a child's communion gown could have looked
innocent, but Tisci spookily printed it with vestigial faces that looked like
the Shroud of Turin's sisters. In the same way, his plays with layering and
proportion would have more easily suggested priestly vestments, there was
indeed certain virtuousness in the white collar that peeked from under black
coats—if they hadn't been cut from an ice-pink duchesse satin. If the aprons
and flaps also evoked Westwood and McLaren's Clothes for Heroes, that's only
because the idea of punk priests seemed made in Tisci heaven. Punk popes too,
in the papal-red details on tees printed with abstract Madonna faces.
And that's Madonna as in "Mother of Christ"
rather than La Ciccone, whose current tour has brought Tisci's clothes to the
massed millions. The designer had artists reinterpret classic religious imagery
to provide the collection's graphic meat, the tees and sweats that have made
Tisci's work for Givenchy such a visible presence around the world. There is
some irony in that fact, given that he arrived on the scene as a precision
cutter of razor-sharp tailoring. Obviously, that was still pristine-present and
correct in this collection. A blouson or a double-breasted jacket layered over
a long shirt is almost as much of a Tisci signature as a jumbo tee. Almost! In
mere months, the Virgin Mary will be as inescapable as birds of paradise are
now, and Rottweiler’s were then.
Above is some of my current sketchbook work.
Above is a Mood-Board I made as part of my Level 3 Fashion & Clothing.
