Fortune collection
- Simone Maas
- 21 jan 2016
- 3 minuten om te lezen
This winter I got the opportunity to visit Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Amsterdam. Like you can probably imagine, I was really excited. I have always wanted to go there. Saturday the 16th of January I went to the duo-show of Esther Haamke. I was looking forward to this. Her designs are usually full of colours and a diverse range of materials. At the same time, she has a critical view of the world around us. These elements she combines in bright collections, like ‘the Fortune Collection’. What is fortune? And has it got something to do with fashion, or maybe not?
What is it?
This show started off with a questions for us, the audience. ‘Is everybody happy?’, and ‘Feeling lucky?’. From the big screen a statue of a cat (Chinese symbol for luck) waved at us. A funky beat started playing and the show began.
The models walked by wearing crazy-colourful outfits. Meanwhile their faces were covered in glitter and all kinds of sparkly bits. The different outfits were over-the-top. We saw lots of all-over-glitter suits, Chinese-cat prints and outfits covered in symbols for luck (like the number 7). Despite these over the top looks the models had an attitude that was very serious. The look on their faces was so fierce, and their walk very strong, it almost had something rebellious to it.
Some elements in the show kept coming back. For example, the cat from the beginning was seen on almost every model. On the screen the words ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ where repeated over and over again. It actually reminded me of a casino. The last element that you couldn’t miss was the role of money in this show. On the background of the screen it was constantly ‘raining money’. Two models even carried a bundle of money billets with them and throw it in the air. They literally made money fall out of the sky.
The end of the show had a funny twist to it. Someone out of the audience got handed over a price from the designer herself. She was ‘the winner’. The models and Esther Haamke left the runway while dancing and popping confetti-canons. The show did not end like your standard fashion show, it ended like a party!
Why is it cool?
With this collection Esther Haamke is literally questioning the way our society works nowadays. She hands over a price and the models throw money around. Meanwhile this question keeps repeating itself in my head: ‘Feeling lucky?’. Does money make you feel lucky? Do material things make you feel lucky? And even, do clothes make you feel lucky? With her over-the-top outfits she is proving the opposite. It is as if she is making fun of the believe that owning things will make you feel happy. Fulfilling material wishes has little to do with luck. She is protesting against the focus on possession. As trendwatcher Lidewij Edelkoort wrote in her Anti Fashion Manifest: ‘Many types of buying and displaying wealth are seen as wasteful and unsustainable, unbearably unnecessary. Not cool.’. This has a lot to do with the trend theme ‘Status’. We are changing the meaning of this word. Status used to mean: owning luxury items. The more expensive your clothes and your car were, the higher your level of status would be. Nowadays we are more and more defining status by the activities we do. The focus lays on travelling, exploring cultures and simply hanging out with friends. We try to gain status by posting pictures of all these activities online. I’m not completely sure if this ‘bragging on facebook’ is a better definition of status, but that’s not up to me.
At the same time, you could see this show as a protest against the fear and anger that is taking over some people. Following the trend ‘Anger, distrust and cynicism’, lots of people have lost trust in the world around them (due to the power of Google or terrorism for example). With this collection she is going the complete opposite way. The prints, colours and even the songs, scream ‘confidence’ and ‘party’. With these designs Esther Haamke totally let go of control, in a time were having everything under control is the thing we want the most.
What sources did I use?
http://www.teampeterstigter.com/index.php?s=happy+andrada (afbeelding 2)
Reader Appearance ILS- Anti Fashion Manifest Lidewij Edelkoort
Always wonder,
Simone
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