A few days ago, Jonathan “J.W.” Anderson posted a picture of the cover of Antoine de Saint‐Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince to his Instagram account—that social media platform turned visual mood-board so often seized upon by designers to offer cryptic clues to their inspiration before a show, and to promote the product heartily after. Anderson apparently read it as a child, and it made a mark. It’s simple, for instance, to relate the broken, beaded crowns Anderson heaped on his models today to the dress of the protagonist of Saint‐Exupéry’s novella—but considering that the Little Prince’s other trademark characteristics were a shock of golden hair and a charming laugh, he’s somewhat reminiscent of the designer himself. Anderson is a prince of London fashion, a charming golden boy: Saint‐Exupéry’s fictional creation made merry of dancing around his narrator’s questioning, never answering directly. That’s what throwing out questions from the backstage throng at a J.W.Anderson show can feel like.
That said, one doubts Anderson intended to ally his own self with the Little Prince; rather, the reference relates to his Spring 2017 collection. And it was about more than just those crowns. “Draw me a cloud,” posed Anderson, obliquely—his own version of the Little Prince’s “Draw me a sheep.” It wasn’t a challenge, though, rather an explanation of his own mind-set in creating the collection, the question he posed himself. Or so he said, succinctly.
Jonathan Anderson speaks in sound bites; his clothes are the visual equivalent. They’re arresting, grabbing attention they’re sometimes worthy of. And often, everyone zeroes in on a single bite (this time, probably, that “childhood rediscovered at will” line) and chews it over endlessly. “How do you regurgitate?” was one of the hypothetical questions Anderson proposed backstage—although he was talking about regurgitating his own back catalogue. He often answers a question with a question, does London fashion’s Little Prince.
The clothes themselves were the usual odd, Andersonian mix: oversized, undersized, goggles strapped over eyes, men in dresses toting your mother’s handbag, sleeves trailing to the floor. Goofy stuff. There was a dressing-up box feel, which chimed with Anderson’s assertion that “It’s not about being nostalgic, it’s about being childlike.” So you’re to read the vaguely ’30s Bloomsbury airs of elongated tunics, wide trousers, and coats as incidental rather than intentional. There was also a lot of arty-farty riffing and referencing: Pop-y female faces; Pollocky dribbles on linen; a touch of Dali to those molten pulled-down sleeves; a Roy Lichtenstein dead-ringer in a blown-up eye, pocked with Ben-Day dots, bogging out from a trench coat shoulder. “It’s like when a kid looks at influences; how they reinterpret those influences,” said Anderson, rather than naming names of those influential art figures whose imprints (and sometimes prints) were so closely reinterpreted. It reminded you of the cliché everyman critique of abstraction: My kid could paint that.
Anderson likes to be obtuse and intriguing. And his clothes are the same—possibly because we critics are left trying to untangle a Möbius-band of outward glances mixed with hearty self-reference, to conform to a paradigm which decrees that a fashion show has to be “about” something. Anderson’s aren’t—at least, not for Spring. Instead, there was a childlike, impulsive assemblage of things that look interesting. There’s often a sense of spontaneity to Anderson’s work, of immediacy. It sometimes, frankly, looks thrown together. “People want fashion,” contemplated the designer, as the press scribbled down his cogitations, possibly without really thinking about them. Anderson this season didn’t propose a fashion, a defined silhouette, an identifiable look: If we’re talking in art metaphors, it was objet trouvé. It felt happened upon, rather than predetermined.
The collection pulled apart easily into individual pieces of colorful knit and handsome tailoring, and a grown-up focus on bankable accessories—cartoonish jewelry, those bags for a few brave men and many more women, laced-top boots, and even an easy eyelet-strung sneaker. However, from Anderson—of whom so much is demanded to shift the fashion conversation, especially when it comes to London menswear—the confused and confusing mix that comprised the rest made for frustrating viewing.
