I have genuinely been thinking about plastic outerwear a lot lately. First there was this amazing PVC motorcycle jacket from Comme Des Garçons, and then I gave Diva a revisit. It's one of my favorite films for many reasons -- the blurring of the lines between high- and lowbrow, the balance of style-over-substance to a totally nebulous, convoluted plot involving an opera obsessive on a motorbike, a philosopher in his "cool period" who sits in a bathtub while his teenage Asian petty-thief girlfriend (?) rollerblades around, and a prostitituion ring, and I love the early '80s overuse of blue light. The aforementioned teenage Asian petty-thief teen has a killer plastic raincoat that scrunches with every move:
There's also plastic -- mixed in with other transparent, reflective materials -- in Bildnis Einer Trinkerin as one of many extraordinary hi-glam anarcho costumes designed by star Tabea Blumenschein (let's talk about her for a moment: did you know she was part of Die Tödliche Doris? And recorded a cracked-out Christmas single with Bettina Köster and Gudrun Gut of Malaria!? SO AWESOME). I'm sure we could find plastic coats in a whole host of late '70s/'80s hyper-stylized films...Liquid Sky, The Hunger perhaps? (Actually, none in The Hunger, not even that glorious opening scene. I think I like to misremember that movie as better than it actually was.)
I thought I'd gone all minimal. Is this my New Romantic tackiness coming out? Is there something we can make of this fleeting obsession (kids, never trust your film fashion inspirations: I have a friend who bought a denim vest after seeing the brooding antihero in some 1950s kitchen-sink drama and just ended up looking like a scrawny gogo dancer), especially when it comes to trenchcoats? Something about the teasing hypersexuality, the exhibitionism of a flasher coat + the exhibition of see-through material? Its artificiality or outdated vision of a dystopian sci-fi future? Wouldn't it just smell really bad?
Designers lately seem to have tempered its more outlandish tendencies and used plastic as an interesting, textural layering piece. The Celine coat above is divine -- the softness, the gradated grey, everything. If there's anyone who can make me feel right about plastic, it's the (active -- sorry Jil Sander) queen of minimalism.
jil sander mens s/s 2012
comme des garçons PVC motorcycle jacket
Please, weigh in with examples of your own -- perhaps some from the '90s? -- to convince me I'm not crazy or tasteless.
TASTEFUL EDIT! How the hell could I have forgotten Joanna Cassidy's coat in Blade Runner?
Okay. NOW weigh in.
Seeing no e-mail address to post my message to I will have to place it here:
ReplyDeleteI would appreciate it if you would either:
a) follow the copyright on my photo and give an attribution with a link back to my photos, or
b) remove my photo from your website.
the photo in question is
the image you have called http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xyfw2rlcYME/TgSzZdx-rlI/AAAAAAAAAXk/T8mFQDBbkUs/s1600/281133259_03eea2f5a1_z.jpg
the link to my photo is http://www.flickr.com/photos/always_be_closing/281133259/
thanks for your attention to this matter
Yours Truly
Mark Christie