The Fate and Consequence between a Glitter Jacket and Michael Jackson’s Death
Way before the memorial day when MJ’s death suddenly happened as a shuttered global news, people who’s working for high-street fashion were busy predicting about what would be the hugest trend in AW2009 among all high-street. After working in UK fashion industry for many years, you are sort of having some 6th sense on what’s coming on next.
There was this photo-shooting of Paris Hilton in a Fushia Pink jacket with shining patent skinny trousers on early issue of 2009 Nylon magazine and my instinct told me that this look was sort of new. An initial storyboard with a going-out mood was created for first Autumn Story 2009 and this story then later became ’80’s Manhattan’ which is at the beginning confused all fashion buyers and consumers with question such as ‘why would you wear glitter in early autumn before Christmas’.
I guess the fashion world is a bit of a ‘Butterfly Effect’ in some way, which means everything and absolutely anything could effect the current trends as well as the future ones going out on the fashion world. Look now, MJ’s death has brought him back in world centre attention and this final stir naturally rocks the glitter story sky high.
Fast forward last year when Lady Gaga released her first album, at least that was the time when I started to show my interest to her. Before, I always thought that she’s just a manufactured music figure with no difference to Britney Spears. Then I read about somewhere that she’s actually a very creative person and that she collaborates with some friends of hers to create her on-stage looks and outfits. This instantly drew my attention to her, because not only that music needs to be strong enough to convince me, but also equally important is the visual performance to finish the whole ‘Package’. Her visual ‘Package’ led me to listen her songs and realize ‘they aren’t that bad at all’. Lady Gaga is such a good example of modern 21st century of pop/perform artist.
Back in early 90s being a teenage in China with no internet and limited sources of anything from outside world, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain was one of a few big names spreading around China. Without enough visual images, Cassettes and CDs were the only art forms to represent an artist. There were very limited images within CDs and from which you had to use quite a lots of own imagination to create the personalities of the artists. Of course Michael Jackson stood out. Sure he offers much more as he ticks all the boxes, from imagery to the sound of music to the technology he brought into music video world. Today, same for Lady Gaga, with so much technology and so much competition, how do you stand out? Gaga is doing an amazing job. She brought lots of glitters and leotards back to our life and yet we were still experimenting the looks, she’s already move on to another level. She claims that, ‘When I’m writing music, I’m thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage. It’s all about everything altogether – performance art, pop performance art, fashion. For me it’s everything coming together and being a real story that will bring back the super-fan. I want the imagery to be so strong that fans will want to eat and taste the lick every part of us.’
Pop music must take the next-coming-trend on board to catch people’s attention to make the most possible impact. When you were crazy buying the come-back-80s-look early 2009, think about La Roux…when you rocking a dark jazzy look, think about Amy Winehouse. And now just a few days left before 2009, girls… when you slip on that black sequin blazer out partying and twirling around, think about MJ for one last time, I’m sorry to see you go, but at least you passed away at a damn right timing…
