PARIS FASHION WEEK: Bernhard Willhelm
Bernhard Willhelm may have scribbled out the words 'SPRING' and 'SUMMER' on his invitation, but his latest collection was both springy and summery. Inspired, it seems by the garb of indigenous tribespeople worldwide, it picked up on the primitive streak we have seen elsewhere - although typically for Willhelm, this was rough and ready as opposed to glossy and Westernised. Indeed, the collection was tribal in the truest sense of the word, but with his trademark naivety it was less warrior woman and more primary school primative - not that this is meant to be pejorative. Shown on shorter, sweeter and altogether softer models (although maybe most of that was the low-heeled sandals and moccassins), the madcap mix opened with a Antipodean Maori face print above a full, static-y synthetic skirt in oil-slick hues, checking off Aztec patterns, African mud colours and Dutch Wax fabrics, seersucker gingham, Grecian sandals and everything and anything inbetween. Often, it looked like the models had fallen into a child's dressing-up box and then clothed themselves liberally with the contents, although the mood was more Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles or Lord of the Flies than anything infantile. Childish scrawls on the model's faces harkened back to Bernhard's first shows in Paris, where freckles and spectacles were biro-ed onto his models faces. Here however, there were moustaches, footprints and tribal markings taken from the clothing patterns. The riots of texture and pattern, flat cuts and oversized shapes of the clothes were reminiscent of early eighties World's End experiments with ethnic forms and square cutting. Then again, these are elements Willhelm has proved himself to be a master of again and again: witness the shrewd simplicty of his box-cutting during his highly successful tenure at Capucci, for example. The touches of whimsy, however - animal masks, pattisserie hats and a suggestive placing of a papier mache hotdog - were unmistakably and uniquely Bernhard, and the reason his clients always come back for second helpings.