“May you live in interesting times.” So goes the old curse, and guess what? We do! Interesting times are upon us, and with them come this unspoken prerogative: Pick a side. Now. You can’t expect a designer to fashion a solution to the world’s travails, when heads of state, who are meant to be experts in that kind of thing, are utterly flummoxed by them; what a smart designer, like Karen Walker, can do is treat her clothes as a medium for expressing the current mood. Walker seems to have picked up on the fact that battle lines are being drawn, and perhaps that’s why her latest outing found her looking back to a previous generation’s contest over who’d get to shape the modern world. Mujer, Walker’s new collection, is a tribute to the female anti-fascists who joined the fray in the Spanish Civil War.
The femaleness was the key thing, here. As opposed to rehashing the usual military references—though this collection did feature the de rigueur camo and khaki—Walker made the case for womanly warriors, emphasizing feminine shapes and details with a folksy inflection. Flounced sleeves, shirring and pintucks, pants cut broad as skirts; these elements fused with utilitarian materials and winks of dishevelment to conjure a “Jane get yer gun” kind of attitude. The prettiness of, say, a floral silk dress with a touch of ruching about the collar served as a red herring—as any loyal viewer of Game of Thrones well knows, the fiercest fighters often come in the most comely of packages. So you can skip the Che-style flak jacket and beret and stick with Walker’s frocks or wide-leg khakis. It won’t matter what you’re wearing when history knocks—just what you do.
