Gareth Pugh, young British designer famous for his extreme, cyber-gothic, all-black, collections, made it a grey day at Paris Fashion Week. He created a melancholic vision in every shade of grey from smoke to pewter. Pugh mixed menswear and womens-wear in his show. His men’s clothes were significantly more restrictive than women’s. Models were dressed in such a way that it was almost difficult to identify them.
His first outfit, a trench belted, over a floating chiffon dress, in tone-on-tone shades of gray, set the mood for show. Models were done with a shaded face makeup as though they’d walked through an ash cloud, with grey head wraps. They marched to mournful sound of strings and drumbeats, a Matthew Stone soundtrack that featured a stentorian interpretation of the theme from Requiem for a Dream.
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The girls’ dresses were, literally, slashed to ribbons, in in zippered trench-coats and two-tone shades of grey silk chiffon, skin-tight leather tailoring, and high, wedge-soled boots laced up with satin ties. Skin-tight, knitted dresses were, similarly, paneled in contrasting shades, or featured tiers of fine pleating.
Overall the effect was a kind of moon-glow lightness, rather than alien articulation his clothes once relied on. The show drew an impressive front row, including Rihanna, Terence Koh, Michael Stipe, Daphne Guinness, and Adrian Grenierfrom from Entourage.
Gareth Pugh chose Grey for Spring 2010 at Paris Fashion Week