At this year's Paris Fashion Week, Comme des Garçons designer and haute couture's favorite bog witch Rei Kawakubo said her new collection was about "the future of silhouette." Kawakubo then presented a series of women whose shapes were obscured by insulation foam. The collection and koan prompted The Cut's Cathy Horyn to wonder, "Was Kawakubo saying we're all going to be horribly fat in the future?"This is the wrong question. The women inside Kawakubo's trash cyclones were still very thin models—they just weren't alerting you to their shape. Presumably a woman exists under this white blob with the hair of beloved Rugrats doll Cynthia, but communicating feminine sex appeal is clearly not her highest priority.Many of fashion's all-time greatest moments—the panniers of Marie Antoinette; Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali's skeleton dress; Rihanna at the 2015 Met Gala—have concerned the shape of women. Not necessarily the shape of their bodies, but how much space they occupy, and each change of silhouette reflects the time in which it originated. "There were so many silhouette changes during the 20th century," says Nancy Diehl, director of the masters program in costume studies at NYU. "Women's fashion definitely reflects societal priorities."Continue reading on Broadly.
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