We are a fractured populace. For all the integration that a global market promises and for all the integration we have enjoyed with the incorporation of the internet, we have actually found our differences amidst our commonality.

Perhaps it is more reaffirming; those who have travelled long knew about this dichotomy that makes up our human race. Our fashion collections viewed through various platforms demonstrate inherent subtleties. The New York collections were more obsessed with the 90s compared to others in the Big Four, some that treaded more heavily in design that would be less street-practical. 

The fractured assembly certainly voices a more modern dilemma as designers look towards an audience on a more global scale. Do we cover up? Or do we bare all? Or can we do both? And to whom are we hoping to embrace this aesthetic? Good questions. And perhaps the fragmenting in some of the collections seeks to find a compromise as we teeter on our obsession with everything retro versus the desire to move towards the future.

Some pieces in collections from designers such as Acne, Elie Saab, Peter Pilotto, Max Mara, Sportmax and Montcler Gamme Rouge feature this segmenting. Like Japanese Kanji as art, it is not what fills the space but what is left after that that makes for contemplation, and in segmenting we simultaneously cover up and expose.  We honor modesty while seduce through showing just enough to lead us to our imagination without baring too much as we did in the 90s.

Of course what we are seeing is a small percentage of an approach amidst hundreds of collections by designers vying for attention on their point of view. And as we continue to mull over what our point of view will be, we will continue, for no, to see various expressions of this contradiction. And it won’t be what we see, but what we leave behind, that may give us clues of where we don’t want to go. In that, we may eventually address where we, or the majority amidst the various segments of mankind, are headed.