“I love fashion! It should be fashion,” Jonathan Anderson declared backstage before the start of his J.W. Anderson Fall 2016 runway show. This season he captured that sentiment beautifully. He’s no stranger to quirky, sometimes awkward outfits, but this weekend he took them to a new level, trading in what little simplicity he had left for something that would capture the eye and evoke the imagination.
He played with fabric and detailing, adding ruffles and layers, hardware for adornment rather than function, and architectural pieces that seemed to almost brush against the attendees as models walked by. He used grommets, zippers and pyramid studs as a way of decorating everything from hemlines to the kneecaps on a pair of red leather trousers. Leather, silk, fur and neoprene were all pushed together in a muddled, but intentional display of fashion as an art form.
It was a means of decorating one’s wardrobe the way one decorates their home, referencing this season's inspiration: ‘50s English interior decorator David Hicks. Rather than buy an entire new wardrobe each season, he noted that one should add to it piece by piece, like a carefully curated house. Anderson's hodgepodge of fabrics, textures and silhouettes begin to make sense when you think about individual pieces that could pulled from the collection and added to your closet.
