“I wanted the show to feel a bit like we’ve thrown the collection up into the sky and it landed in a big pile, a mountain. And everybody’s just grabbing something out of it and putting it on.” Andreas Kronthaler granted his own wish this afternoon with a fashion show that was as bawdy as it was rowdy and chaotic and erotic. Backstage, he said his mix was inspired by the costumes in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1972 film adaptation of The Canterbury Tales, along with the aura and beauty of his fellow Austrian, Romy Schneider. Said the designer, “She embodied everything. And she was a bit like Vivienne, a fearless woman who always went for the artistry.”
Kronthaler’s ramshackle crew of pilgrims were dressed so variously that the only through-line was that difference. Milanese loden coats were cut in some excellent unlikely checks and worn with smudged lipstick and stockings. There was a finely powerful nylon cloqué wrap coat cinched with a gold grommeted belt and worn above flat knee-high silk upper boots. An almost dainty debutante-worthy dress in check with full arms and comely skirt was given an animal shagginess by the clumps of blue thread woven to bristle out of the fabric.
The erotic signifiers of lingerie were applied with gleeful permissiveness to man and woman alike. A net dress was patterned with sinuous wanderings of embroidered orange braid. Frill-edged playsuits cut from refashioned underwear and a strapless bias minidress made of shirting silk and cotton were placed against wildly archaic hats as imagined by Pasolini’s costume designer, Danilo Donati.
This free-association meander through the medieval concluded with a bride in unfinished double duchesse satin who clutched a bouquet of radishes. Her smudged lipstick suggested a tumble en route to the altar. Kronthaler waved airily to his crowd.