(Courtesy of Keith Bedford/Reuters)



I've always been struck by Marc Jacobs's sense of timing. A recent collection found him bored and musing on boredom's appeal — but it didn't feel like the boredom most people feel: the confining, gray, dull sense of time scraping against itself and getting nowhere. It was a period when some of us were holding our breaths: There was a war on, no end in sight, none of the republicos in trouble yet, things were shaky on Wall Street, hurricanes turning into monsters, and there was a general sense of anxiety around. So there came Marc's models: self-contained, completely involved in their own lovely, elegant thoughts, or so the clothes would say. It was a perfect response: Let this stupid world go away for a while. I'm just going to take myself out for a little stroll, dressed impeccably, unlike anyone else, and wait for it all to sort itself out. I remember that red coat with long lapels for fall: a don't you dare look at me or not look at me statement, screamingly serene.

And now, the Marc Jacobs sense of timing wins out again. He knows how to be different without being alienating, how to be ahead of the curve without breaking it in two. The show was upside down and backwards on purpose. What a relief, after day after day of orderly shows.

It went like this: He came out first. Cue "Bolero" by Ravel. Then the models appeared in finale line-up, which usually happens at the end of the show. But this was just the beginning. Gorgeous dresses, constructed and deconstructed, trains attached like long, careless folds of silks, like a bow tied on at the last minute. Dresses that looked like they were half on. Slits up to the hip. Pants made of sheer material that made legs look more naked than if they were bare. Underwear. Bags stuck onto other bags. Shoes that were too small. Garments that looked like the model had just grabbed the black satin sheet off the bed and tied it on to go downstairs for a late breakfast at the hotel.

And yet the show looked just perfect. Models wore surrealist-like cones, little sparkling horns, odd little shapes on their heads. And dreamy, pale complexions. Nude lips, but in a slightly unsettling, up-for-three-nights-straight kind of way. Some wore long gloves — scrunched and rolled onto such bony arms. Their hair was part Kenneth coif, from the time when all proper women wore gloves and shoes and bag to match and went to Kenneth; part roll-in-the-hay tousled; and part freakout razzed, like Bride of Frankenstein after six hours of partying in a German beer haus in the 1920s.

While the disarray of everything risked feeling like some kind of little girls' dress-up in Mommy's and Grandmommy's clothing (if they were fabulous, if the clothes were outrageously stylish, as were the shoes), it didn't. It was clear that this was a sophisticated, outrageous, but disciplined take, that the designer himself had decided to undo every preconceived notion about what a well-dressed woman should wear, throw it all on the floor, and then pile it back on again. In a way, Jacobs was responding to those restrained shapes of his own fall. In another way, he was responding to just about everything else, and translating it into his fantastic language, and thank goodness for that.

P.S. One more thought: Among the guests were Osama Bin Laden's niece, Courtney Love, and the newly divorcing Heath Ledger of Brokeback Mountain fame. Their presence certainly reinforced Marc Jacobs's approach: to shred the fragile veil of the zeitgeist and hand it all back to us in Technicolor. At least that's how it feels one day later, which also happens to be the anniversary of 9/11. Another level of brilliance to chew on, slowly, and with joy.

Jana Martin is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Fashion & Design.