Review of Christopher Kane Fall 2023 Fashion Show
The Persistence of Memory
By Mark Wittmer
At once investigating familiar codes of feminine dressing while uncannily distorting and rewriting them, Christopher Kane’s Fall 2023 collection is an exploration of the way memory both remains and is refashioned.
The collection takes as its basis Kane’s memories of the women in his life while he was growing up during the 80s: his mother, aunts, and neighbors, housewives and working women alike. But memories are fluid, and the collection echoes the complexity of memory and the interweaving of lives through surreal experimentation in tailoring and construction.
Tailoring reimagines the 80s blazer via inventive and off-kilter use of cutouts and double layering, makes use of internal seams to atypically accentuate the waist, or slices sleeves to leave forearms exposed and lend a cape-like quality to the silhouette.
Meanwhile, dresses explore ideas of extension and exaggeration to distort and question typically feminine qualities and roles. Bustles are used on both the front and back of the body, twisting a Victorian motif into a surreal extension of the hips that recalls the folds of a gathered trash bag, a barmaid dress, and a contemporary reconfiguring of an ostentatious evening gown. Straps are reinforced and extended, creating a rigid and three-dimensional effect that both frame and conceal the face. Colors range from school uniform charcoals to pop primaries, all grounded by black.
Other motifs are more difficult to fit into an overarching theme of the collection, but do intriguing work to extend its creative world and reinforce its spirit of challenging yet playful surrealism. The delicate and colorful flower motifs that soften hard-line silhouettes are contrasted by hyperrealist AI-generated prints of pigs, rats, and chicks. This youthful edge is in turn balanced back out by dresses that make use of lace panels that recall vintage lingerie, or layer organza jersey over sequins for a psychedelic interaction of textures.
At once eclectic and focused, elusive and immediate, the collection puts both design know-how and imagination to work in transforming a personal recollection into a universal statement on the complex tangle of identities and aesthetics that shape women’s experience. Christopher Kane is a unique figure in that his work feels both very personal and distinctly tuned into the inflection point that is fashion’s current moment, and this collection is a curiously powerful example of this status.