Anne Sofie Madsen’s usual game is creating fashion from a myriad of fabrics and materials, and hodgepodging them together into a final, complex creation. While this can sometimes look like scraps from the studio floor have been brought to life, Madsen’s Frankenstein creations are becoming more polished as the seasons go on. For Spring, in an inversion of her usual approach, the clothes appeared as though they were falling apart rather than thrown together. It worked. “I’ve been really fascinated with failures and flaws,” Madsen said after the show. This celebration of beauty in the broken echoes the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi: “It is quite Japanese, actually,” she admitted. This is the designer’s second season showing in Tokyo as part of winning the DHL Exported prize, which facilitates her showing at Japan’s Amazon Fashion Week, as well as in Paris.
Styled by Madsen herself (a freedom she doesn’t have in Paris), the collection featured suits that were deconstructed and torn so that the trouser legs dissolved into skirts, showing a softness at odds with traditional businesswear. “The suit is meant to disguise vulnerability, by strengthening the shoulder or shaping up the body, but here the pieces are falling apart, having narrow shoulders, bigger hips; it’s doing the opposite thing,” she said. Skirts were sliced into strips, corseting details were peppered onto outerwear, and woven cotton cardboard-beige pieces were held together with packaging tape that was actually foil under vinyl. A few sparkles were added for good measure: a body-chain in the shape of a bra, as well as embellishments that looked as though diamond-drop earrings had been pinned to the fabrics. The most impressive looks were the decadent ruffled pieces, well executed and inspired by the discipline of an uptight church girl going off the rails. “A shirt cannot get drunk, but if it could, this is my interpretation of it,” Madsen explained.
The overarching message was one of defiant femininity, exploring the relationship between perceived weakness and strength, and celebrating it. Fittingly, for the final few looks, the lyrics of Khia’s 2002 hit “My Neck, My Back” played over Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, to create a feminist anthem that said that the Madsen woman owns her sexuality.
