Inspiration Boards F/W 2010 : "Circus" and "In The Company of Wolves".

I have this uncanny knack for tapping into the cultural zeitgeist and predicting what ideas are going to be most influential as far as fashion trends for upcoming seasons.
If you watched Buffy The Vampire Slayer, it's kind of what Druscilla did but just with fashion. I am not the only one. The jewelry designer at N2 for Les Nereides almost always releases a line with a theme that is going to be influential years later



and Grace Coddington does a fashion editorial that does the same thing:











We are fashion oracles in a way... But hardly anyone notices.
Fashion is influenced by everything around us. Although some of the more commercially driven people would like to think that they can reduce inspiration to a simple commercial algorithm or formula, you cannot. Fashion, like any other art is influenced by what the artists (in this case, designers) see and feel all around them. What is happening socially, politically, in other artistic fields such as music and movies. A theme,all of a sudden emerges from the collective artistic unconscious and you can see it everywhere. Lots of people thinking of the same thing.
For S/S'10,the release of Tim Burton's highly anticipated "Alice in Wonderland" was a theme that echoed through many of next seasons collections, particularly Kinder Aggugini's:






For F/W '10, I am feeling two different strong "ideas" influencing fashion. it all has a very Angela Carter (the writer) influence. She is a writer in the genre of magical realism and was the author of both, "A Night at the Circus" and the screenplay for Neil Jordan's "In the Company of Wolves".

There is a movie that opens Friday called "Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant":


that I think is going to be a huge inspiration. Turn of the Century Circus/Carnival/ Side Show is a theme that is all over popular culture and has been getting louder... Britney Spears just did a hugely successful tour based on that theme. A couple of years ago, America's Next Top Model did a photo shoot (probably the best in the history of the show, using the Victorian Carnival Side Show as it's inspiration:




I think the dark romance and glamour of the Gothic Side Show and Carnival is going to be echoed all over the fall collections of F/W 2010...

I also feel a bad moon rising...

I also just mentioned Neil Jordan's movie "In the Company of Wolves". In the movie, which is absolutely visually exquisite the story of "Little Red Ridding Hood" is explored from a magical realism, post modernist and Freudian perspective. That pretty much describes all of Angela Carter's work actually...



Well, turns out Leonardo Di Caprio is filming a Gothic adaptation of the same fairy tale:(http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006895.html?categoryid=13&cs=1)

Low and behold Vogue just did an editorial ( and I can put money down Grace Coddington had a hand in this) for Prada that was inspired by, you guessed it... Little Red Ridding Hood. From what I hear the editorial also inspired the Prada store windows at the recent "Fashion's Night Out":




And a couple of years ago, N2 came out with this collection:


Double, double toil and trouble;Fire burn, and caldron bubble. The 3 Fashion Divination Witches have spoken... stock up on red gingham and white rickrack...