Luxurious comfort: The return of plush costumes
WE CONSIDER THE TRENDS FROM PODIUM, which can be adapted for your wardrobe for the next six months. The “plush” costume Juicy Couture, one of the main ghosts of the zero, who had become (literally) a museum piece by 2016, has officially returned to fashion. And although it would be easiest to say that Demna Gvasalia, who had recently unveiled the latest couture fashion week with the upgraded version of the plush costume, was to blame for everything, this is not quite the case.
How it all began
Before Kim Kardashian met Kanye West, she fell in love with beige and appeared on the cover of Vogue — although now it’s almost impossible to imagine that everything was different once — the world was completely different. Not that this meeting was a turning point for everyone, but it is precisely with the example of Kim that the contrast between zero and tenth is most clearly seen.
The main heroine of the last decade, Paris Hilton, has not changed at all since then and has not changed the golden glamor for a second. Jessica Simpson and Nicole Richie took up the family, disappeared from sight and appear in public quite rarely. Well, Madonna, who once started the fashion for costumes Juicy Couture, during her career, changed the images so often that they are easier to get confused than to understand. So the most famous of the Kardashian sisters, in zero, began not only as a reality star, but also as an assistant, Paris Hilton (how this union ended, you can guess from the game "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" - Hilton became the prototype of the main villain who she hates with all her heart each downloaded application) is a much more illustrative example.
Kim loved mini-dresses and bustier dresses, stretched at the waist with wide belts, tucked into black jeans boots, everything shiny and shining — and, of course, plush costumes. By her own admission, she loved them so much that she gathered them in all colors: from classic poisonous pink to pale green. Now, the passion comes back only when the former Juicy fan wants to laugh at herself: what yesterday was considered practically a uniform successful (that is, beautiful, secured and popular) girl, today it became embarrassing to love sincerely. Although judging by what is happening, the famous costume still has time to take its own, albeit in a completely different capacity.
The company Juicy Couture, which became one of the main symbols of the null, was founded in the 90s, but released its top hit in 2001. And although before the advent of the velor monster, both jeans and T-shirts of the brand enjoyed success, it was only with him that the story became so massive. They say that the first wave of their resounding success of the founder of Juicy, Pamela Skaist-Levi and Gela Nash-Taylor, is obliged to Madonna: she was made a special customized costume with the signature "Madge" on the jacket and other stars wanted to follow the lead of the singer. And when photographs of celebrity began to appear on the covers and pages of tabloids, they dressed in similar costumes in large quantities, their fans no longer had a chance to resist the beginning epidemic.
Many stars had their own name "Juicy Couture": if Cameron Diaz, for example, signed her suit simply as "Cameron", then Jennifer Aniston asked to write "Mrs Pitt" on her jacket - this is another unexpected specter of the null. But the most loyal fan of the brand in this sense was not even Paris Hilton, as might be expected, but Britney Spears. She, marrying Kevin Federline, dressed all the guests of the wedding party in custom-made Juicy Couture costumes: the girls - with the signature "The Maids", the men - "Pimp Daddy".
In 2003, when Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy sold the brand to Fifth & Pacific Companies, Inc., the New York Times admired how brand founders in just six years grew from a $ 200 million start-up to a $ 51 million concern. ". By that time, everyone was already wearing suits - and everywhere. In the cinema, too, we will not go far for examples - take at least the main film guide on the style of zero, "Mean Girls".
It is difficult to say exactly when the halo of classiness around velor suits disappeared, and Juicy Couture ceased to be an actual brand - all this happened gradually, but by the end of zero years the process was completed. The management of the Fifth & Pacific Companies did not cope well with the mission to lead the company along a new path to new heights. Their autumn collection of 2010 turned out to be so unsuccessful that it was decided not to buy several large retailers at once, from Bergdorf Goodman to Saks Fifth Avenue.
In 2013, the company was again sold - this time to the Authentic Brands Group. And a year later in the press there was news that Juicy Couture closes all its American stores. The international ones remained, but in America, things from now on were supposed to hang only in Kohl's. This news alone could have caused a nostalgia attack on the former followers of radical glamor, but another soon followed - the plush costume officially became a museum exhibit, hitting the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. And this seemed to be the official admission that the Juicy era was over.
How plush costumes are back in fashion
Perhaps the first thing that everyone who visits Juicy Couture sees today is a shining hashtag-announcement #trackisback. The return of "plush" stars - the main event of the year for the Los Angeles brand. One of them is devoted to the entire latest Juicy ad campaign. The brand celebrates coming of age: in 2016, it turns 21, so there are exactly 21 girls in the campaign - and everyone talks about their first sports suits. And in the beginning of summer, before this story and before the main wave of noise, Juicy Couture announced that, with Bloomingdale's, they were re-releasing their costumes with a special capsule in four colors, from which it all began.
Another gift to themselves and their loyal fans was, of course, the collaboration with Demna Gvasalia. When, shortly before the spring-summer collection of 2017, the Vetements team announced that it would do the show with 16 more marks, it had a wow effect. But when Juicy Couture showed up on the list of “collaborators,” hundreds of people around the world would surely rejoice. Not only due to the fact that for some five years that have passed since the official end of the zero years, they managed to miss an old friend. The pink and cheerful legend of the last decade with the style of Vetements in its original form does not fit well. As a result, Demna Gvasalia and his team drastically altered the famous costume, turning it into a diving or circus costume: it is a tight fitting and fully closed leotard, even the hands are tightened with red velor gloves.
But you shouldn't think that Gvasalia issued a ticket to Juicy Couture, although it would be nice to think so. First, the designer brought the very idea of this collaboration from Moscow, or more precisely from KM20 - on his last visit to Russia he bought velor pants from the Tigran Avetisyan spring collection in the Moscow concept store. He liked them so much that, as they say, they became one of the sources of inspiration for the new collaboration. So it was Avetisyan who somehow guessed in a suit that the girls had long been hiding in the far corner of the wardrobe, a potential. Ashish Gupta, in whom the plush costumes at the shows also met, and according to all the rules of zero, they were also embroidered with sequins, in this case it does not count - it still exists in its own, separate from the general world, where, regardless of the circumstances, an eternal party reigns.
But the work of Tigran Avetisyan, on the contrary, is always tightly tied to what is happening in the industry now: each of his collection becomes angry (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less) comment on the most pressing issues. About the spring-summer collection of 2016, called Best Hits, Tigran himself says: “I am fascinated by what was considered“ cool ”, it falls out of fashion in a few seasons and is forgotten." And he adds, explaining that the collection is dedicated to brands that are no longer relevant - to those who "fell out." Perhaps, if you expand the theme, not only brands, but also ideas, ideals of beauty and even people.
At least, this conclusion can be made after the dedicated collection of the video "The Photoshoot". The main role is a poisonous pink velor suit, also an upgraded version of the famous Juicy suit, not a literal copy. The pants here are wide and do not fit, but, on the contrary, hang in a bag, instead of a short O-shirt in sequins - a sweatshirt. Under the suit, in the frame, the mounds bulge and descend, forming either luxurious curves, humps and bumps that look like terrible tumors. The fabric is stretched, the suit is cracking at the seams.
Secondly, the aesthetics of zero, which is returned to mass fashion only by individual elements, has long been the basis of the visual language of a new generation of feminists like Arvida Bistrom and Mayan Toledano. The abundance of pink, false nails, thongs sticking above the trouser belt, plush pants, stretched so that camel toe is formed, which people like to look for stars in their dresses and make fun of the tabloids - all this becomes important codes for them, through which they talk about physicality and about new understanding the concept of "femininity". To see this, just look at last year’s Bistrom aerobics video lesson with a selfie stick. Of course, these images should be interpreted in a completely different way than in the zero ones that gave rise to them: to the extreme femininity, radical tenderness and self-love become a way of empowerment. And the good old plush suit here is a very important player.
Thirdly, and finally, it is completely obvious that we live in a world built on a mixture of "high" and "low." It is in contrasts that the stylists of the main modern pop icons play. So the style of trashionsta zero into the stylistic redundancy of our years fits perfectly harmoniously.
What to wear
How to adapt the returning plush costume to modern realities is a question that can be answered indefinitely and in detail. Since the "modernized" design versions of Juicy suits to the original are mostly sent only with material, you can wear them just as calmly as regular jeans. That is, with everything without exception - from a white T-shirt and leather leather jacket to a sports crop top and a voluminous knitted cardigan.
At the same time, it is still possible without much hesitation to get from the far shelf a pink miracle, bought ten years ago, and use it in exactly the same way as then. That is, with uggs or flip-flops, a T-shirt in rhinestones, artificial curls, cleverly glued to the bleached present, a cup of Starbucks, large sunglasses and a logo bag. It is unlikely that someone will decide that you are serious - the irony of such a "total bow" of times of heavy glamor is read instantly simply because the very ideology of those years categorically does not correspond to modern realities.
To look expensive and rich in any circumstances, to emphasize their status in every way, to hunt a rich husband in order to acquire this status are all also ghosts of the past, to speak out loud and with a serious look about which has long been awkward. So, without a fair amount of self-irony, playing Paris Hilton today is almost impossible. Although it is certainly a lot of fun to try on this role for at least a day - this image awakens zero blood and unrestrained enthusiasm, which the past decade certainly doesn’t take away, but the new one, as they say, is just not enough.
Photo:Juicy Couture / Facebook, Juicy Couture, KM20
