Review of Prabal Gurung Fall 2023 Fashion Show
Metamorphosis
By Obi Anyanwu
Prabal Gurung hasn’t been back to his native country Nepal in several years. Not since Covid-19 had disrupted the world. Everyone experienced, adjusted and dealt with the global pandemic in their own way, with one half still upholding the new societal norms to prevent the deadly virus’ spread and the other half treating years of a global lockdown as an afterthought.
It’s hard to ignore the surreal past three years transitioning from life before Covid to a post-Covid world.
Many tried took the forced downtime as a period to reflect on life’s deeper meanings and how it pertains to their own lives, while many others tried to hang onto life before the lockdown.
Now, Gurung didn’t mention Covid-19, the lockdowns and life after 2020 before his runway show, but it’s hard to ignore the surreal past three years transitioning from life before Covid to a post-Covid world.
Like many that looked inward during life’s forced stillness, Gurung went on his own spiritual journey through a 10-day meditation retreat to Vipassana with his mom—“my mom has been doing it for 25 years,” Gurung added—and felt his experience reconnected him to many lessons he was taught in his household growing up like life, death, finding a balance for joy and despair, and ‘Impermanence,’ the title of his collection.
“I didn’t want impermanence on a T-shirt,” Gurung said. “I believe in show, not tell. This is a very personal collection and a spiritual journey. Everything is so transient, impermanent and yet we’re so arrogant. Growing up that’s what we were taught.”
Gurung transformed the Celeste Bartos Forum at the New York Public Library into an evening on a Nepalese beach, with a shimmering silver floor that reflected the ceiling lights that shined bright like stars illuminating a vast expanse. The set transported the audience to an island retreat where Gurung made abstract themes and ideas into tangible clothing. Dresses with cutaway hem lines and patterned ensembles nod to butterflies and the metamorphosis they experience to become anew.
Everything is so transient, impermanent and yet we’re so arrogant. Growing up that’s what we were taught.”
This collection will hit stores by late 2023, which gives Gurung’s customer more than enough time to exit their cocoons—and Covid-19 lockdown rules in New York City that have been removed—and return to life as their new selves in this collection that speak less to the ego and more to the soul.