Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Studio
In the past, I’ve gone to Tadashi Shojhi for exactly what he delivers & delivers well: interestingly cut pieces that are just “Japanese” enough to be cool & thoughtful, but never so much as to be labeled avant garde (aka, “unwearable” by the masses). I’ve never been disappointed. Until today. This collection started out strong enough, with a series of loosely folded & draped pieces that achieved the cool effect of floppy origami.
Then, as if the collection were literally hijacked by bad taste, this collection took a seriously unfortunate bad turn down a path no designer ever wants to walk. Gone were the inventive silhouettes, the moody coloring & the newish ideas & in was a repetitive parade of what can best be described as, well, sort of awful prom dresses. To add insult to visual injury, Mr. Shojhi chose to highlight every color in which each of these pieces is available, a tactic that can be done as a statement, but in this case, it seemed like more of a shortage of samples than any sort of fashion message attempting to be conveyed. I could go on, but I will spare you & save you the time.
At times like these, as a commentator, one is left wondering if it wasn’t as bad as I was feeling at the moment & that perhaps others are seeing things differently than you are. But in this case, a fellow observer two seats to my right, whom I had never met before this show, proved my suspicions of simple misunderstanding as false, when, as the final walk around of the models was in its final moments, she leaned forward, looked at me in puzzlement & exasperatingly stated, “what the hell am I supposed to write about that?!”. Whew… I’m not crazy.
-Scott French
Designer website: TadashiCollection.com
What we’ve said: Spring 2011
