Judging by the scrum to get to Andrew Gn following his show, his Spring collection was a bellwether. Society ladies shoved, security started to sweat, and excited clients could not refrain from jumping in on a reporter’s interview. One started talking social calendar right there, on the spot.
Of course, Gn is accustomed to such enthusiasm. Backstage, the designer was as ebullient as the clothes. “Intense, crazy color! Statuesque! Shine! For me, that is the most important thing in the future,” he said.
An art lover and collector of beautiful things, Gn always plucks from a memory bank of multiple references. For Spring, that included Veruschka and the strong women associated with the Bloomsbury Group and Russian Constructivism. On the runway, a group of graphic black-and-white dresses nodded to haute Bohemia before quickly segueing into the kind of intricately embellished party dress that has made Gn such a go-to on the society circuit. He then kicked it up a notch with saturated color and lush florals, frissoned-up by halved exotic fruits, some of which seemed to contain stylized peace signs. Elsewhere, he flexed his skills as a colorist, piling jewel tone dresses with still more jewels, as on a periwinkle dress with tiers of stones at collar and cuffs. Paired with colorful python boots, it made for a pretty heady mix. In the final grouping, the sequin work was as smooth as fish scales on a dress that glistened like emeralds.
The designer recently observed in the course of a quieter, preshow conversation, “Thinking about what to design for the future keeps me young.” (Not that he’s old, mind you.)
There are several ways to parse that comment. Gn is not your garden-variety futurist. He’s more interested in “timelessness” in the sense of “not disposable.” He wants to design dresses women wear and then hand to their daughters. That should give the younger set something to daydream about.
