Playful, mismatched styles pervade fashion this spring

Unlikely pairings are upending the style world’s most hallowed conventions. From left: A Rosie Assoulin asymmetric cotton-blend top and a Christopher Kane silk-blend fringe skirt; a Rag & Bone knit dress and a Derek Lam patchwork lace handkerchief skirt; and a Stella McCartney pleated crepe georgette dress and an Opening Ceremony embroidered silk bomber. PHOTO: NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK • In Diane von Furstenberg's spring fashion campaign video, Karlie Kloss wears a wrap dress in a clashing combination of miniature pink and green blossoms as she poses against an equally pattern-mad backdrop of hearts and flowers and cheetah spots. It is a giddy mix for sure, but Kloss, the model-slash-entrepreneur-slash-New York University student, pulls it off with aplomb.

"This is me being me," she says, fixing the camera with a challenging stare. "Now you be you."

Not such a tall order, it seems, if you consider the wealth of fashion options this season, many aimed at women with magpie tendencies and an eye for pleasing dissonance, the kind expressed on spring runways in the form of crazily inventive, wilfully chaotic juxtapositions of colour, texture, pattern and shape.

There were every-which-way stripes and plaids at Marc Jacobs, artfully mismatched chiffons and brocades at Dries Van Noten and a gypsy mash-up of swirling motifs at Gucci, where designer Alessandro Michele set much of the tone for the season.

Spring's joyful irreverence is as evident at Christopher Kane, whose multi-toned skirt, a cataract of fringe, is combined with a caution-yellow Rosie Assoulin off-the-shoulder top; or at Rag & Bone, whose skinny latticework dress is improbably teamed here with a patchwork lace Derek Lam skirt trailing a wispy handkerchief hem.

A closer look at these and other unlikely pairings would seem to argue that the disruptive climate governing everything from politics to technology has infiltrated the world of style - and in particular, the wardrobes of those fashion indies, young or not so young, bent on upending the style world's most hallowed conventions.

"The playfulness and eccentricity we've been seeing on the runways seems to be a response to a shift toward individual dressing," said Ms Rachael Wang, the fashion director of Allure. It underscores the point, she said, "that there are no longer hard and fast rules for what's 'in' or 'out'". Instead, she said: "One can find justification for wearing almost anything."

It is a position staked out by fashion's premier rule-breakers, designers such as Michele, Miuccia Prada and Demna Gvasalia of Vetements and Balenciaga, each an ardent champion of an uncorked self-expression that can be charmingly eccentric, if not downright subversive.

Their madcap experiments with colour, texture and form are a testament to the high spirits pervading fashion now. "Like a John Cage symphony or a Joseph Cornell collage", the fashion scribe and Vogue contributor Lynn Yaeger writes in the recent Bergdorf Goodman style supplement, "these unlikely melanges can really make the heart sing".

There is nothing dour about a Stella McCartney dress, all swingy accordion pleats, with an embroidered silk bomber by Opening Ceremony. Such colourful combinations offer a bracing antidote to the numbing predictability of normcore or the self-conscious rigours of minimalism.

Michelle Elie, a former model and the designer of Prim, a collection of jewellery and accessories, said she welcomes a more playful, apparently anarchic approach. "With what goes on in the world around us and so little that we can control, such collections capture a moment of lightness," she said.

There are plenty of precedents, certainly, some dating from the advent of hippies, who did not baulk at combining multi-tiered prairie skirts with army surplus field jackets or circus-striped trousers with filmy Edwardian dressing gowns.

NEW YORK TIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on April 07, 2016, with the headline Playful, mismatched styles pervade fashion this spring. Subscribe