Maggie Barry’s M8 Urban collection lights things up at Style Fashion Week
Designer Maggie Barry lit things up – both literally and figuratively – at Style Fashion Week on Thursday night with a candy-colored, cartoon-festooned collection of rave-appropriate clothes for men and women that shimmered, blinked and strobed their way into the heart by way of the funny bone.
The “Fashion Electric Urban Lights – UK/LA” collection was the spring 2016 offering from the L.A.-based designer’s M8 Urban line, the younger streetwear version of her namesake label which has been worn by the likes of Lady Gaga, Niki Minaj and Antebellum’s Hillary Scott, and Barry described her inspiration in the show notes this way:
“The ‘80s, it was an exciting and electrifying time in music and art. I wanted to capture this fabulous feeling – for Spring 2016 it was all about Punk, New Wave, Hip Hop and Disco. All the clubs were sizzling with energy and excitement and fashion became electric!!”
The energy and electricity part of the equation came in the form of a streaky neon light photoprint that carried through the collection: smudged, wavy lines and glowing tubes of oranges, yellows and reds against a black background that could easily have been the twinkling lights of the Santa Monica Pier reflected off the inky Pacific just before daybreak or the Sunset Strip reflected off a pair of sunglasses at last call. Barry partnered with Epson to create the custom-printed dye-sublimated fabric (that company, like many technology companies, is trying to get a foothold in the fashion space) which found its way into a range of bike shorts, drop-crotch pants and body-hugging dresses.
Barry mined the music motif with an allover print created by UK punk cartoon artist and illustrator David Worth that included the emoji-like visages of myriad musicians that took celeb-spotting to a whole new level. (If our eyes didn’t deceive us, we think we spied with our little eyes cartoon versions of David Bowie, Grace Jones, Billy Idol, Amy Winehouse and a guy in a Devo terraced “energy dome” hat.) The bold, cheery print not only festooned dresses, cropped trousers and shirts but also vests, neckties, trucker-style hats and even, to humorous effect, a pair of exceedingly brief men’s briefs.
The collection also included amped-up versions of old-school silhouettes like the sequin varsity jacket in a shade of blue that could have come straight out of a candy dish and a motorcycle jacket in a multicolored metallic leather that gleamed like a crumpled chrome bumper.
Some of the looks were accessorized with honest-to-goodness lights: a strip of strobes slug like a bandolier, a black sequin trucker hat with a blinking pair of less than / greater than symbols (<>) and a gloved hand that shot four fingers of green laser beams across the crowd.
The battery-powered lights were a fun piece of stagecraft to be sure, but Barry didn’t need to telegraph it; the collection was perfectly eclectic, electric and perfectly plugged in to the party people vibe – no (electrical) jack required.
Style Fashion Week, the last of Los Angeles’ several “fashion weeks,” kicked off its five-day run Wednesday at the Reef in downtown L.A. in a second-floor space instead of the tented parking lot as originally planned.
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