It's amazing how quickly designers are burrowing down into the early eighties for inspiration, and who's coming back up with what. At Armand Basi, Markus Lupfer hit on an as-yet-unexplored seam: not the neon graffiti New York club scene beloved by Marc Jacobs, but the dark, furious, feminist fashion counterpoint that was exploding on the Paris runway at the same time, thanks to Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto.
Oddly, the notes on seats credited Helmut Newton and the Bauhaus as sources, though Newton was hardly a known fan of stomping flat brothel-creepers; extreme drop-crotch pants; or the kind of figure-enveloping, giant-shouldered shapes Lupfer sent out. That's not to quarrel too much with what the designer actually showed: something between the monochrome moodiness of the Japanese and memories of that short-lived yet hard to forget New Wave poseur phase when the likes of Ultravox or A Flock of Seagulls were taking themselves awfully seriously. For trend hounds, that meant the collection ticked all the right sort of boxes with its coolly sloppy dolman-sleeved biker jackets, voluminous-shouldered capes, skinny knit leggings, and grommet-perforated asymmetric knitwear. Thankfully, Lupfer managed not to overstep the mark that would have turned it into editorial-only historical pastiche, making it the strongest collection he's yet turned out for the Spanish label.
