Alice in the wonderland of Europe just got herself more attitude.
Far from the apron and the boring coif of her Walt Disney animated remodeling, one of our favorite girly heroes is taking fashion tips from designers such as Nicholas Kirkwood, Alexander McQueen, Chloe, and Ann Demeulmeester, to name a few, as she parades her image in the vitrines of Printemps Department Store in Paris.
The display which started this month will run until March 14. Alice and her adventurer’s ethos might have found herself flattered by the chosen designers’ famous madhatter experimentations with forms and materials.
Nicholas Kirkwood’s usual style-centered technique for designing shoes is, in the manner of elaborate fairy tales and showy imaginations, gussied up with fantastical roses, miniature teapots and the March Hare’s watch. The predominantly gray stilettos he designed for Printemps is literally a walking wonderland– or its Garden of Live Flowers– with the heels inlaid with chessboard patterns.
Kirkwood forgives his own design for going beyond his usual looking glass of form and functionality. “…I’m not usually so applicative—typically, I’m thinking about line, silhouette. But this time, I figured, why not just pile as much as I can on top?”
The designer seems to be aligned in good measure with the tale’s extension of reality to a realm where proportions are lost. His Alice shoes are too loud and vibrant for human feet, but the fashion magnates of Wonderland just might throw a tea party in honor of them.
Another designer who took part in the display, Charles Anastase, remains loyal to the original tale in his almost strewn and bedraggled interpretation of the Alice dress. Walt Disney’s Alice must be shocked to her blonde roots.
Anastase, who admits to adopting the Lewis Carroll sensibility in fashioning his style, threw together the fine yards of white tulle and blue organza to recreate the look of Alice’s wanderlust, the type that glamorously gets entangled in the bramble of talking flowers and chess pieces. With this dress Alice is a dark, spirited girl, not the clueless, pinned up pre-teen who’s too neat for another dimension.
But one of the most interesting among the Alice collection is a so-called “upside down dress” from Maison Martin Margiela, which, true to its name and the premise of Lewis Carroll’s inversion of the universe, captures the tale’s philosophy so well.
Actually, from afar, the dress looks like a striking veiled number, made sexy and avant-garde by caged sleeves and a skirt whose hem is strapped to the head, rather than grazes the knees. You must be wondering how that outfit works itself out, but for your Alice-like curiosity a trip to Printemps might be in order. (Frances R)
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