“It was all about clash, just the same old story,” said Haider Ackermann, and in a way he was right on both counts. Yes, there was an ongoing friction in his decorative dialectic; rich sombre(ish) olive and blue panne velvet Acker-jackets contrasting with brazen-hussy woolens comprehensively inseminated with come-hither spangly crystal. Silk jacquard Acker-suits in a drunken check were mismatched into different looks against different counterpoint pieces.
The same old story was also evident in the richness in fabrication, the angular agonized rocker archetype, and a sense of mordant lushness. We’ve seen those chisel toes, that hi-there hosiery (a happy thing after sockless Milan), and that attenuated silhouette before, too.
It might have been the tragic, not-tonight-dear flaccid mohawk forelocks or the competing richness of the incredible Hôtel de Ville salon we were luxuriating in, but this seemed a darker chapter of Acker-ism than usual—especially compared with the sunlit swashbuckle of his last men’s collection. The women’s looks, too, were wanner and harder.
Subtle variation of the familiar—aka the same old story—is a nobly counterintuitive road to tread in fashion’s endless turning circle. The Acker-type archetype is a prime example of it. This season’s version, though, was intriguingly withdrawn.
