Animals are turning up all over the New York runways. At Prabal Gurung tonight, it was butterflies, their wing patterns supersized and printed on the asymmetrically draped dresses he favours and knitted as intarsias into sweaters. Backstage he explained their presence. Over the holidays he did a 10-day silent retreat, during which time he didn’t talk to anyone, and wasn’t even supposed to make eye contact. But he did come face-to-face with a butterfly, and he found it a useful metaphor for finding the beauty in impermanence.
Gurung used the butterfly motif on waist shaper belts trailing long sashes and as accents on choli blouses. The collection was a dialogue between western and eastern modes of dress, between hard and soft, and masculine and feminine. The sash-like belts, for instance, smoothed the edges of sharply tailored trousers. Elsewhere, he topped delicate metallic lace slip dresses with swaggering duster coats, and reimagined the midriff-bearing choli as a cropped black leather jacket with a baby pink faux fur collar. Juxtapositions of this kind are what animate fashion. If a tuxedo jacket chopped off at the sternum and a pants-free look that pairs a silk blouse with nothing but briefs fail to shock us now, once upon a time they did.
Gurung’s colours were bold and varied, as were his patterns, and most of the looks were heavily accessorised with jewelry: earlobes full of earrings, stacks of bangles, three-dimensional chain mail scarf necklaces, the occasional anklet. Interrupting the muchness was an icy white double-breasted coat dress paired with a long half-skirt and a draped ivory dress whose asymmetric skirt revealed a black inner lining. Historically, Gurung has never been a minimalist, but as he suggested backstage, all is change.
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