“At the end of the day, I make beautiful dresses that are sort of ageless,” said Gilles Mendel during a showing of his Pre-Fall collection, rich with sparkle and shine. Artist Danh Vo’s deconstructed Lady Liberty sculptures, rendered in copper, got the designer thinking about metallics. Flou is important to this designer, so the collection’s title, “Armor With Amour” was a bit misleading. It wasn’t the hard durability of metal Mendel was thinking of—most of his dresses had a molten quality of movement—but the way light flashes off of its surfaces. He did have a strong woman in mind though, and this, combined with the shine of metallics led him, in turn, to the (trending) 1980s, when disco was still playing in clubs. “It was definitely a glamorous moment [and] a time where women liked to go out and they liked to dance, and I think the dancing vibration translated very well into my clothes,” he said. Some of the shorter, more “period” looks echoed those seen recently at places like Saint Laurent; the opening lookbook image, an oversize and glittering jacket, was true to its inspiration: the divine Grace Jones.
The most casual look in the collection—relatively speaking, that is—was a sheared mink bomber jacket/minidress with strass trimming, but it’s the get-dressed-up-and-hit-the-town dresses that are always the draw here. The most Mendel-looking were the hand-pleated looks. It turns out that this signature handwork (which can be applied to any silhouette), stems from a source far distant from the hedonistic greed decade. “I always had a love affair with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire,” said Mendel. “When I started to design clothes my dream was to make that Ginger Rogers moment, and hand pleating was a perfect way because it was taking chiffon, which is the lightest material ever, and pleating it in a way that it feels airy and has texture and lightness. You want to dance with it on.” And so the beat goes on chez Mendel.
