Models in Cages at Britain's Gareth Pugh
If Yves Saint Laurent was widely hailed as a feminist for freeing women from pinching bustiers and nip-waisted dresses, what does that make Gareth Pugh?
The British bad boy designer sent models out in convict stripes, leather cages and head-englobing plastic tears for his spring-summer 2012 collection at Paris fashion week.
Pugh's artistry is easy enough to appreciate: From a purely aesthetic point of view, his abbreviated sheath dresses made out of vertical strips of black or white leather were indisputably beautiful.
But as clothing, meant to be worn by women, there was something deeply disturbing about the cage garments — particularly when fitted with matching cage muzzles, as they were at Wednesday's ready-to-wear show. Beyond the jarring antifeminist context, the clothes were simply too rigid to be anything more than statement pieces for women determined to make a big entrance.
Pugh's misogynistic message didn't end there, though. The show's finale saw models clad in layers of gleaming gray robes and jackets that looked as if they'd been fished out of an oil spill, their heads completely encased in elongated plastic masks.
If the caged girls were barely able to move, these poor models looked as if they were hard-pressed even to breathe.
Source: Associated Press
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