GRAPHISME

 Ruby Jean Wilson in an ad for Jacobs' Spring 2013 Collection

Still from William Klein's, Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966)

I'll admit, I was a little jealous when I saw Marc Jacobs latest spring collections for both Louis Vuitton and his eponymous label. Elated and jealous. Happy that he was making some of my biggest dreams in dressmaking a reality, and a bit green with envy because I dreamt them up when I was a preteen. It's true. In a series of recurring dreams, I dug for shift dresses, knee high boots and rhodoid handbags in a dusty shop somewhere in London I'd never been. So suffice it to say, for most of my life a rudegirl checkered shift has been my idea of THE crème de la crème frock. Go figure. I'm still looking for the perfect one.

It's a definite that Jacobs' graphic, mod looks will become a rave- splashed on the pages of editorials and making their way into fashion's lower ranks. After all, geometry and the human body do flatter one another well.

However, as we know fashion so often reinvents itself, there is nothing so new about this approach. Sophie Tauber Arp was making geometric dresses in the 1920s, and Gustav Klimt's lover Emilie Flöge had a shop, Schwester Flöge, with super modern frocks that would give many from 2013 a run for their money. Anyhow, Jacobs is the penultimate setter of trends and these sharp, glossy looks are still lovely and fresh. Funny how a 60s aesthetic continues to appear aggressively modern some 40 years later.

Portrait of Emilie Flöge, c.1900-1905