You get the feeling there isn't an indecisive bone in Jonathan Anderson's body. That's why he's the most influential young force in fashion right now. "You have to commit," he said firmly, as he described the process that determined the character of his new collection. "It was finished in summer, the look was done, the image was there three weeks before Christmas." And that included makeup, hair, and sunglasses. With no wriggle room.
So it sounded right when Anderson described his woman as "someone who wears the trousers." He gave them to her: big tweedy numbers, and more of those elephant pants in colored leathers he showed for Spring. But here they were covered by long, pale leather tunics in complementary shades. Anderson called them lab coats because he liked to think of his Loewe girl laboring over an equation. "She has to work herself out," he added.
Lab coats or no, they highlighted the uniform nature of the collection. There was even a navy cape with a military flourish. And the models with their slicked-back hair and sunglasses had a glazed, android look. But there was actually less uniformity in that than in the way that Anderson was so fascinated by a very distinctive silhouette: oversize blousons, generously proportioned trousers. Somewhere in his head, that contributed to his notion of clothes that passed from day to night with a minimum of effort. Its most striking interpretation was in lamé, sunray-pleated in a skirt, or cut into a sinuous tunic. Anderson said he'd been imagining his woman hit by a lightning bolt, leaving her fiery and feisty. "Like Spanish women," he added. "They know who they are, they know how to have fun."
As usual, there was a pervasive, seductive sense of oddness with Anderson's clothes. The materials ran the gamut from sober gray tweed to wingy fire-engine red patent. Anderson himself was particularly enchanted by that last look. "The bag is so contradictory," he said gleefully. But he was totally committed to it. So we believed, as well. That's a mark of genius.
