Fashion Department

Alisa Nizhniy

It just so happens that New York Fashion Week parallels Copenhagen Fashion Week, where Danish designer bARBARA Í gONGINI just debuted her Autumn/Winter 2010 collection.

For next fall, Gongini replaces her articulate gaudiness with a more relaxed demeanor, varying the volume of fabrics and using an array of raw, flowing, distressed textures. This collection elegantly perpetuates the resurgent tone of modern primitivism that was set by Rick Owens and most recently made prominent by the Mulleavy sisters. Stylistically, Gongini collections also resemble the structural inclinations of Gareth Pugh, Bernhard Willhelm, and Ann Demeulemeester.

Adding to her primitivism-appeal, Gongini’s 2008 collections embraced the cloven-hoofed boot, and the minimalist designer continues to emphasize the exclusion of color from her work. To accessorize, frizzy, nest-like hairpieces, à la Prada’s Fall 2009 collection (extending into the Spring 2010 repertoires of Yohji Yamamoto, Lanvin, and Comme des Garçons), now appropriately find themselves in the company of Gongini’s thorny and furry derby shoes and purses. Gongini’s Fall 2010 synthesizes unisex fashion to feel unrestrained, primal, and unmistakably autonomous.

_{Perhaps inspired by Rick Owens Fall 2007}

_{Perhaps inspired by Ann Demeulemeester Fall 2009}

_{Perhaps inspired by Rodarte Fall 2008}

bARBARA Í gONGINI Autumn/Winter 2009:

_{For more information on bARBARA Í gONGINI, please visit:}

_{www.barbaraigongini.dk. Photos courtesy of Copenhagen Fashion Week.}