Rarely does a street-born trend flare so bright, so big, that it can be seen from the ivory towers of fashion — Paris couture! — but such is neon. Last week, Karl Lagerfeld gave Chanel its most ecstatic and gorgeous couture show in years. “Neon Baroque,” he called it.
Couture has always struck me as funereal: each stunning, over-dramatic dress looking like the last one on Earth, until the corpse bridezilla comes out as finale. It’s also a relic, blissfully removed from the street-to-runway-to-street cycle of prêt-a-porter. If there’s neon in couture, then neon isn’t dead. It’s embalmed.
So, no matter how you or I feel about five years of searing fluorescence, it’s time to line up and pay our respects. Behold, an abbreviated history of post-millennial neon:
March 2006: UK-based, NME-hyped electro-rock outfit The Klaxons release debut album Gravity’s Rainbow. High summer rolls around, and Hoxton is seized by 24-hour day-glo. Too soon, the tunes hit stateside and the trend gets all American Apparelized.
October 2006: Six months after graduating from CSM, mad-skilled club kid Christopher Kane breaks out with a Spring ’07 collection of Alaia-ripping dresses in highlighter hues. British Voguettes go crazy. Rightly so. What grunge did for Marc Jacobs in 1992, nu-rave does for Kane.
Spring 2007: Kids in Toronto discover nu-rave.
October 2007: I meet my new (and now, still) best friend at Toronto Fashion Week. We spend 45 minutes discussing “trends we’re glad we skipped.” Neon wins. But we are early abandoners. At that month’s Justice show at CiRCA (pictured), the crowd’s so searingly fluoro that even the biggest d-bag can be excused for wearing sunglasses inside.
December 2007: New York magazine prints “A Brief History of Neon,” illuminating absolutely nothing about neon in fashion while ensuring that, if an EYE WEEKLY Style columnist wanted to perform a similar undertaking someday, she wouldn’t be able to use the best possible title. (I have no idea how angry this will one day make me.)
Spring 2008: Kids in Etobicoke discover nu-rave. As a direct result, Wrongbar is allowed to thrive. At this point, neon is a hot flash of genius: there’s never been, nor will there ever be, an easier way to spot those with whom it is unnecessary to become friends.
December 2008: Marc Jacobs brings Stephen Sprouse back to Louis Vuitton with a series of day-glo graffiti’d handbags, which sell like whoa.
February 2009: Then, for Fall ’10, Marc Jacobs shows those true hyper-colours (mostly in really great coats; see right). Finally! Only problem: so does Michael Kors, who isn’t exactly a designer’s designer, you know? Kors explains neon to New York mag’s The Cut blog like so: “Listen, I don’t know if nature-inspired florals are a really urban thing. So when you think about fall color in New York … you think of neon. I love just the pop of neon with all these neutrals.”
April 2009: Essie releases their Neon Collection of nail polishes. Beauty blogs tout pouts to match.
October 2009: Toronto designer Evan Biddell directs his LG Fashion Week opening salvo at poor old neon. His Spring ’10 show begins with a fluoro spray of actual paint. I close my eyes.
Jan. 10, 2010: I’m impulse-browsing in Dennis’ House of Vintage and, for the first time ever, I want a little boucle jacket. It’s trimmed and threaded with shocking pink, as if some kid took a highlighter to mumsy’s old Chanel. Also, it’s $40. My co-shoppers look pale; one says “absolutely not.” I grin and buy it.
Jan. 26, 2010: In Lagerfeld’s “Neon Baroque” (pictured at right), there is no actual neon in the clothes, which are spacey, glimmering, and extraordinarily light (for couture). There are jackets without seams, without a single signature gold button. There are dresses like bubbles, embellishments like shattered glass. There are shorts. Shorts!
The neon is where you might say it belongs — in the lighting — but it’s also in Karl Lagerfeld’s playful, retro-futurist attitude.
Neon is dead. Long live neon.