Show Report
The subdued palette anchored it all neatly to contemporary feelings for wrapping, draping and protective layers.
Ohne Titel seemed to toughened up their act for A/W 2010 - then again, this appears to be a general mood for next season. Not a scrap of bright colour illuminated their catwalk, which instead marched to a militia beat of camouflage shades of khaki, olive, sand and every shade of black. Perhaps that military feel was all about physical endurance, as certainly there was some kind of melding of sport with couture, with mesh-panel dresses pieced and piped like a high-performance athletic shoe, the patterning sometimes extended down into sheer net leggings striated with go-faster banding. There was a man-woman feel to many of the outfits, a tense contrast of opposites - girlish touches of drapery in short silk evening frocks were toughened up by collaging hard crystals, leather and those hi-tech sports fabrics across their brief, controlled surfaces, while the masculine tailoring caved in decidedly at the waist to form an hourglass silhouette. Even when the seams didn't do the work, belts cinched in strict wool riding jackets, beastly fur coats and short bomber jackets. This was part of a Victoriana influence, most evident in tailored wool shirt-dresses, firm at the shoulder and buttoned in gleaming copper, but slashed with sharp darts along the torso, the whole coming to a point like a nineteenth-century bodice. Occasionally, some of those sporting touches also looked a little bit 1800s, especially wool jodphur trousers (they called it a 'slouch pant') with curvaceous volume across the thigh. It looked great in the show, but exactly how those voluptuous thighs will translate in real life remains questionable - although judging by their proliferation thus far, an answer will be needed come Autumn 2010. If this all sounds a bit confusing, it wasn't - the subdued palette anchored it all neatly to contemporary feelings for wrapping, draping and protective layers. Maybe that was the issue - it had all too many roots in the very-recent visual language of others (Rick Owens and Nicolas Ghesquiere specifically) to really stand alone.
