The dramatic swoosh of a black nylon ball gown loosely based on the wardrobe of renaissance princess Christina Oldenberg of Denmark was the final flourish of the fun catwalk presentation staged by the Danish fashion designer Peter Jensen at London's V&A museum on Friday, November 18th.
Fittingly set in the handsome hall housing Raphael's designs for his enormous tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, the show was the third point of a triangle of events marking Jensen's womenswear label's tenth anniversary this year. The exhibition Peter Jensen's Muses opened at the Designmuseum Danmark in August, coinciding with the publication of a book with the charmingly improbable title of Peter Jensen & Mary Miles Minter & Mildred & Emma & Olga & Nancy & Gertrude & Cindy & Tonya & Fanny & Sissy & Helena & Tina & Christina & Mink & Candice-Marie & Jodie & Lytte & Laurie & Muriel & Shelley & Anna Karina.
If this sounds like an exercise in ensuring nobody got left out then that was indeed the intention: the monograph - as well as Friday's show - is a glorious showcase of all 21 of the character-based collections the designer has created over the past decade. For these, Jensen famously selects a different woman as its central theme; often ones who are anything but fashion icons. Thus on Friday, the sartorial interpretation of the sixteenth century princess was joined on the V&A runway by fashion renditions of cinema icons Meryl Streep, Sissy Spacek and Mink Stole, art photographers Cindy Sherman and Tina Barney, sporting heroines (and otherwise) Olga Korbutt and Tonya Harding, writer Gertrude Stein and cosmetics giant Helena Rubenstein to name but nine. Whereas the book documents Jensen's collections as originally previewed, though, the V&A extravaganza had a revisionary function. By mixing up the chronology so it was impossible to work out which look belonged to which collection, Jensen's designs were for once divorced from their defining muse concept and presented purely as beautiful clothes.
And this is the genius of the V&A's Fashion In Motion series, of which Jensen's presentation is the latest instalment. Conceived of by the museum's inspirational contemporary team in 1999 and launched with a memorable spectacle of Philip-Treacy-hat-wearing models parading through the V&A's cast courts, its original premise was to open up the closed doors of the very then private fashion show to the public. For the featured designers who have numbered Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and Yohji Yamamoto among them, these once-in-a-career invitations from one of the world's finest costume institutes provide an opportunity to create a "best of" performance, free from the commercial imperatives of fashion week. And for the public who queue in droves for the presentations, it's a chance to witness the aspects of a live fashion show one can't discern from film or photographs. As the museum's press release puts it, the aim, "is to show fashion as it is meant to be seen - in motion."
These words call to mind the Fashion In Motion series' proximity to another relatively recent development in the display of fashion - the Internet. For this sentence was the very one I also used at the many talks and interviews I gave during the seven years that I edited SHOWstudio.com, one of the very first websites to take up the challenge of representing clothing online. Launching just one year after Fashion In Motion began, we also repeated the mantra that the essence - and future - of fashion lay in interactivity and especially motion image in our attempts to inspire a then very technophobic fashion world.
Recently, I had a chance to put these claims to the test when a torn calf muscle prevented me from attending Paris Fashion Week and I was forced to watch the collections from home, online. And at risk of confirming the instincts of many newspaper editors who are increasingly slashing the substantial budgets that support their fashion teams to travel to the collections, it actually didn't compare too badly. Whereas in the bad old days fashion journalists howled that you couldn't see the clothes properly from a computer screen, style.com's close-ups relayed every stitch, while nowfashion.com's real-time stills faithfully detailed every outfit at the moment it premiered. Six weeks on, it's now possible to watch most of the shows in their entirety via videos posted on brand sites.
Yet despite this wealth of information available on demand, it's still not the same thing. Something crucial is lacking, and it isn't movement. My fashion week on the couch may have provided a blow-by-blow list of spring/summer product, but its sheer lack of atmosphere, industry politics and yes, insider gossip denied me the crucial knowledge absorbed only from being there. The closer we get to verisimilitude in the digital representation of fashion, even via motion imagery, it seems the further we are from the visceral qualities of a real-world presentation and from clothing itself. I'm yet to see a live transmission or film that recreates anywhere near the sense of occasion when hundreds of people come together to witness the results of the six months' research, intense hard work and creative intent that goes into a brilliant 20-minute collection premiere, however modest. What's ultimately missing from the sea of virtual fashion shows now available, no matter how animated, is the aura of the designer. That's who determines how clothes are meant to be seen - close up and personal. Watching Peter Jensen come out from backstage to make a tiny curtsey while a hall full of fans cheered the wit and innovation of his ten years' work - now, that was truly moving fashion.