I started reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road during the summer before college. I got a short way into it before stopping and putting the book aside to gather dust.
Now on a seemingly unrelated note, New York Fashion Week is here and with it comes a slew of fantastically designed clothing. I bring up The Road because it seems to be a main source of influence on the runways. Almost every designer is thinking ahead and producing clothing for the future world. Whether the future is a post-apocalyptic barren world of ash or a hard-hit capitalist industry where everyday is a struggle, depends on the specific designer, but it's certainly noticeable that Fall 2009 fashion is based on a strong utilitarian theme with undertones of imminent catastrophe.
Young designer Richard Chai opened his show with a dark silhouette of clothing: black army boots, black velvet pants and a dark navy plaid overcoat on a very stern-faced model. The theme continued throughout the collection with the disheveled army boots and baggy pants combo being matched with various tops and coats, almost all of which were military-inspired peacoats and jackets. Throw a little ash and dirt on the clothing, and it's not hard to imagine McCarthy's "the man" trudging down a desolate highway or Clive Owen's lead character in the film Children of Men.
Skip over to Duckie Brown's runway show and you can watch models walk in what I can only call puff-ball ninja clothing. The clothing is all black, head to toe, exposing only the model's eyes. Occasionally, there's an injection of bright orange in the color scheme, perhaps imitating a chemical spill? But the clothing is unnatural, sleek and puffy, lustrous and non-reflective, like clothing you pick off the ground and put on for the sake of protection. An interesting notion was that some of the pieces looked like they were made from Kevlar, an unusual material in designer clothing, one would think.
On the very same day of Duckie Brown's show, Rag & Bone seemed to have a similar idea in mind. Playing off Japanese influences, the two designers brought "ninja pants" to the runway, which are essentially unstructured baggy pants cinched at the knees and ankles by extraneous pieces of fabric. The shirts and jackets were collarless, again an unnatural look for most people, making it seem futuristic. Some of the "formalwear" was metallic in its appearance, evoking Kevlar again. Utilitarian, militant, protective and resilient seemed to ring through all these shows, which begs the question: What are all these men hiding from?
Undoubtedly, designers foresee tough times that don't seem to be going away any time soon. Their clothes reflect what I think to be leftovers of war. The clothes that were once worn on the battlefields of a long lost war are being worn again for lack of money and selection (hence all the Kevlar).
These men have nothing to wear but these remnants of past tough times and in a way foreshadow the rough future that lies ahead, post-apocalyptic or not. And if Cormac McCarthy is right about what's likely to happen to humanity and civilization (self-produced or not), then there's at least the small hope of rebirth and rescue that appears at the end of his novel.
Yet for now, we'll stick to our guns, stay the miserable course and wear Kevlar to class in the hope that everything will work out fine.
