J.W. Anderson called his show Chamber of Isolation. The clinical white quilting of the first two outfits looked like it'd been stripped from the walls of a padded cell. The third outfit could have been an institutional gown cut from PVC so it would wipe clean easily. Anderson dubbed his pre-fall collection Domesticity of Monogamy. Here, he imagined a woman so oppressed by that domesticity that she'd flipped her wig. The makeup was intended to suggest bitten lips. That was one of the details that made the show somewhat impenetrable. The questions Anderson posed backstage were these: "Where are women? Are we in a flat-line?" Maybe he was attempting an update on Freud's notorious "What do women want?" The flat-line certainly made its presence felt with the padded nylon pieces, the fishermen's hats, and the PVC bibs that strapped on like Kevlar vests, all alternately readable as constrictive or protective of female fragility (both, by the way, Anderson's readings).
"Awkward modernity" was another of the designer's reference points, and in that he was successful with his choice of proportion and fabric. He has often found beauty in the bizarre. There were skirts here in crystal-studded puffa fabric that had an oily glamour, only slightly muted by the blurry blanket-check tops that partnered them. The padded vest in pinstripes with matching pants had the skewed strictness that has distinguished Anderson's work in the past. A mad housewife could do a lot worse than the long sweaters over longer plaid skirts.
