The crumpled effect, or the art of bending conventions

THEcrumpled clothes, particularly in the world that emerges from the 1950s with the colossal production of wrinkle-resistant textiles such as Tergal, all synthetic materials, magic detergents or ironing boards that can be folded up with one finger, are a trademark of idleness, a way out, a demonstration of its own uselessness in a utilitarian world, in short a germinated seed of historical dandyism.

Refusing the dress codes in force, and the ironing which allows to take care of your dress and to present well, and which, from the army to the business world, has brought the whole society in line, the crumpled is a freedom, a crumpled convention.

Both voluntary outcast and mark of the relentless pace of the world, it is a gesture accessible to those who can afford the luxury of a life without constraints.

Here, the first example that comes to mind is the shirt. Not ironed, it becomes unfit for the rules of decorum and discipline which have been attributed to it since it was put into circulation in the form we know it. So dissident, the crumpled is also a classic motif. A poor relative of drapery – a motif of luxury, wealth, authority and a central artistic gesture present in painting, sculpture, and photography – the crumpled light illuminates fashion with its decayed mystery and its thwarted rhythm.

In poplin, gabardine, silk, imitation leather, the “crumpled” conveys an aesthetic of intense life. Far from the freedoms that it claims to take, it can also be the manifestation and the irrefutable proof of a certain decadent Stakhanovism, of a grueling production, in the right line of the myths which surround the writers, the architects, the executioners of work with new ideas and feverish eyes.

Read also At the waist, at the collar or at the head, freedom by knots

Both voluntary outcast and mark of the relentless pace of the world, it is a gesture accessible to those who can afford the luxury of a life without constraints. It was counting without the second-hand clothes and its bundles of dusty, out of use clothes. Gold mine for some, cheap opportunity or window of contestation for others, the waste, the second hand, its creases, its holes, its faded colors and its cuts from another age, allow the crumpled to continue its road and still crumbles the tenants of the clean, the new, the smooth.

Cotton top, Sessùn, € 175.  Cotton T-shirt, Petit Bateau, € 17.90.  Back-to-Back jeans, raw cotton, MM6, Maison Margiela € 250.
Catherine trench coat, in cotton, Comptoir des Cotonniers, € 195.
Silk and crochet dress, Miu Miu, € 3,500.
Silk and lace dress, Jil Sander by Lucie and Luke Meier, € 2,750.
Genazuli dress, in polyester, Isabel Marant, € 920.  Cotton camisole, Armor Lux, € 28.40.

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