Shoulder Pads Redux?

One standout in the designer collections for the 2017 fall/winter season has been the jacket below from Anthony Vaccarello, the creative director for Paris-based Saint Laurent. 

What is distinctive, to my eye, are the rather broad shoulders. 

Vacarello didn't stop with the jacket.  Here are several other designs with pretty impressive shoulder spans.

Arrayed left to right, the look seems to be heading into Grace Jones territory.  We'll see how that goes.

(Vacarello replaced Hedi Slimane, who left Saint Laurent in 2016 after doubling sales of the high-fashion line in four short years.  Slimane's collections were alternately described as accessible or overly commercial; he also worked in Los Angeles, which may not have been received well in France.)

Vacarello's collection may be seen as something of an homage to Yves Saint Laurent, the most influential fashion designer of the late 20th century.  He popularized pantsuits for women, safari jackets as street wear and big shoulder pads, which he introduced in 1971.

The latter innovation was the fashion equivalent of lighting a match, but slowly.  By the 1980s, big-shouldered womenswear was seen as assertive and strong; the look appealed to baby boomer women moving into executive positions in the work world.

Lesser designers just kept going and going with bigger and bigger shoulder pads until things got really out of hand.  (See below.)

To be fair, Yves Saint Laurent cannot be held responsible for this wretched excess.  Here is an advertisement for one of his 1987 collections.  The clothes are classic and would look perfectly fine today.  The man's fashion sense was impeccable.

Other Designers Now 

In addition to Vacarello, other designers are testing the market for big shoulder pads.  Here are some notable jackets for the fall winter season.


Balmain 

Altuzarra

Alexander McQueen

These are more tailored looks than the loosely constructed pieces we have seen in recent years.  They may be signaling a turn from the all-casual/all-the-time ethic, or perhaps they are aimed at presenting a more flattering, hourglass-shaped physique. 

It's probably a bit early to invest in this look.  But if your mother or grandmother has a few vintage designs in her attic, you might ask her to bring them out so you can try them on with your black pants -- the wool pair, not the yoga pants.  

Note

Yves Saint Laurent was not the first designer to sew broad shoulder pads into women's clothing.  The trend got a flutter in the 1940s, most notably in the costumes Joan Crawford wore in her Oscar-winning title role, Mildred Pierce.  In the movie, Mildred was a hard-working, self-made woman with a difficult daughter.  The film was a hit in 1945 and remains popular today. (Milo Anderson was the costume designer for the film.)

Platform Shoes -- Then and Now

Now-historical Nasty Gal platforms

If you are like me, you tend to think that fashion trends date to the time you first noticed them.  In my case, I thought platform shoes were introduced in my lifetime.  

The joke's on me, though.  Platforms are old, old news.  European women were wearing such shoes during the Renaissance.  They were called chopines.

Chopines

Here you see a pair of chopines, a shoe style popular between the 15th and 17th centuries.

This particular pair is new, of course, and built based on observations of shoe remnants and old documents. These chopines can be seen at the big Kunsthistorishes Museum in Vienna. 

      That green pair makes me think of fashion designer Marc Jacobs and his recent

      penchant for exaggerated platform boots, which might well have been inspired 

      by chopines.  Below is an example from the most recent collection.

      I don't think Jacobs expects to sell many of these boots.  They seem to function 

      as background details in promotions of more conventional handbags and dresses. 

The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum is among several collections that have actual antique chopines.  Imagine walking down the street in shoes like these.  (For that matter, imagine keeping shoes like these and passing them down in the family for hundreds of years!)

Lore has it that chopines were worn by ladies of leisure.  They were practical shoes in that they protected one's feet during walks along dirt roads in the days when thoroughfares were decorated with mud, donkey manure and whatever garbage people had tossed out their windows.

The shoes were impractical, however, in that wearers were likely to teeter and fall.  (See Marc Jacobs, above.) Ladies in chopines traditionally were escorted by servants to protect against this eventuality. 

Symbolism

The wearing of chopines has been compared to the old Chinese practice of binding women's feet to keep them small or, ideally, tiny. In both cases, the result was to make women unable to maneuver; only wealthy men could afford wives who could not contribute to the family enterprise.

This seems to have led men of the age to regard women wearing chopines as particularly attractive.  A 19th century English etymologist wrote this:  

      "The noise of the Chopine -- the creaking of this Shoe, seems to have made a very 

      lively impression on the Spanish imagination; as we find it applied in familiar language 

      to express the satisfaction which is enjoyed by the presence of a woman in the house."

Chopines/Platforms of the Moment

Here are some of this spring's platform sandals.

Balmain

Salvatore Ferragamo

Proenza Schouler

Marco de Vincenzo

None of these shoes is all that unusual.  Platforms, especially platform sandals, have become wardrobe staples.  It makes sense for fashion houses to release new versions every year.  

Note: Chopine Humor

William Shakespeare was aware of the styles of his day.  He managed to work a chopine joke into "Hamlet," perhaps to leaven the heavy mood in much of the rest of the play.

In Act II, Scene 2, the Danish prince says this to an actor: 

       "What, my young lady and mistress! By 'r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven 

      than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. 

          "Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring."

The fun here is that the actor is a man who plays female parts; there were no women thespians at the Globe Theatre, or any other theater, in the bard's day.  Shakespeare teases the young man, noting that he is growing taller and suggesting that his vocal range may be trending lower, as adolescent boys' voices tend to do.  The implication is that the actor is aging out of female roles.

Here is a a dumbed-down, executive-summary translation of the same lines from something called "No Fear Shakespeare:"

      "Well hello, my young lady friend. You’ve grown as much as the height of a pair of platform shoes at least! 

           "I hope your voice hasn’t changed yet."