Playing the association game with Philipp Plein must be a trippy experience. When they said his show was inspired by Barbarella, yours truly asked the obvious question: is Paco Rabanne, who designed Jane Fonda’s futuristic costumes for the 1968 sci-fi film, a fashion hero of his? “I actually don’t look up to any designer in particular, but I respect their work,” Plein said. “For sure, Paco Rabanne was extremely talented.” When the German designer bumped into an old Barbarella poster of Fonda “wearing that incredible outfit,” his answer wasn’t to reinterpret it in clothes but in theatrics. Because Pleinworld, as he calls his creative universe, isn’t so much about the garments as it is about the lifestyle embodied by the numerous Philipp Plein logos they carry.
Sure, there were 1960s up-‘dos and ornamented bodies similar to Barbarella’s, but had Fonda made the trek to Brooklyn for the elaborate show, chances are the collection – rooted in snow sports – would have reminded her more of certain James Bond films. (Well, if 007 had had a penchant for gangster rap and Yeti boots.) It’s hard to think of that period of Fonda’s life without thinking of the political activism she engaged in. Watching Plein’s show – where a UFO that hovered over a space filled with artificial snow delivered Irina Shayk to a real robot, who then serenaded her with Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon surrounded by Batman-style snowmobiles and Migos and friends rapping away – you wondered if Plein had detected a parallel between Space Age and our current zeitgeist. The 1960s was a time of socio-political upheaval and enough-is-enough movements that changed the world.
Looking, for instance, at his incredibly diverse cast – not your usual binary model line-up – you’d be inclined to think so. “I don’t want to talk about politics. I am here to entertain,” Plein said. These days, though, the two are often the same thing. When Space Age materialised in the 1960s, it represented a certain escapism. Just last week, Tesla put a privately financed rocket into space, launching a new era of dreams and opportunity. “What Elon Musk is doing is impressive. It makes us feel like everything is possible. Maybe one day I’ll have a tour around the galaxies, too,” Plein said. “The idea of conquering space is every child’s dream, and it was also mine.”
Written by: Anders Christian Madsen
Photos by: Jay WIggs and Thaddaeus McAdams
