This collection was an ode to Tiresias, a bird-communicating Greek soothsayer who blabbed divine secrets and was punished by being blinded then turned into a woman—as whom she was both praised as a priestess and pilloried as a prostitute (depending on who you read)—before eventually gender-reverting. Which is actually kind of now.
The clothes themselves seemed more literal articulations of the 18th century (perhaps edging the cusp of the 19th) in terms of form: There were full-bodied frock coats with jauntily pointed tales, corsetry, an inclination toward ruffle-free yet jabot-like fullness at the neck, and a sense of tailoring pared back and made primitive. As an Aganovich virgin, to these eyes there also seemed a soft backdrop of Ackermann, Watanabe, and Westwood here: neither as debt nor derivation, just context.
The collection was an ongoing argument between the tie (masculine trope) and the color pink (feminine trope). Both tropes were warped, abused, remixed, and blended. Batik-dyed linen was the outer layer against folded-back flashes of silk organza animal print, an inversion of hierarchy that saw the rougher fabric promoted to front of house with the snazzier pushed to the fringes. There were moments when the fumes pumping forth from the Viper smoke machine became a little too thick to see all the orchid undulations on offer or to appreciate the twists in the muted monochrome brocades. Yet there was clarity enough to appreciate this tightly packed meditation on wearable tumult.
