What Falls Away
CS Leigh on Martine Sitbon

Part Two

It began in darkness, as many compelling adventures do. It was the Spring/Summer 2010 defilé and as you entered the amazing space that is the headquarters for Martine Sitbon on Rue du Mail in Paris the lights were dimmed. It is the nicest way to begin for many reasons, but most of all because it takes the pressure off the audience who at so many shows these days are in some way unpaid extras at an extravaganza not of their own making. At Martine Sitbon on this night the audience is a participant. It’s a subtle distinction not lost on many in the crowd, who use the shade as a private space in which to reflect and begin the process of watching and looking and deciding what works. The defilé is the point at which we squarely meet a designer’s vision. It’s theatre for a couple of hundred people – performed only once. It is the experience of fashion at its most distilled.

Looking back is something most of us never do when it comes to clothes. Even a month can feel like forever. The transitory nature of the industry has a tendency to reduce detail to blur. There is very little time to think about how the dots all come together and what they mean to the whole. As I consider myself someone who follows fashion without being in fashion I insist on the luxury of reflection. I like looking back at fashion’s history whether that be last month or twenty years ago. Fashion like many other art forms is a continuum though its traces can be fleeting shadows very difficult to keep track of especially now as the disposable rules.

The most recent chance I had to connect with Martine Sitbon and her resonant vision was that great show of her new collection in Paris and I am enjoying looking back at the experience some six weeks after the event.

What Martine Sitbon does feels fresh while still holding on to its foundation in darkness. This is to her credit. There are no gimmicks in these clothes. They are objects of freedom born of a mind that is not beholden to any camp but who produces desired objects which are exactly right for the client who wants and even needs them. We’ve watched a lot of “Munsters” tricks this season and it was a breath of fresh night air here not to have to imagine who might wear these clothes and for what and in what possible combination. They are the real deal.

And yet the structure is there too. It’s not a free for all. That is one of the things that makes Martine Sitbon so interesting today. Her clothes have rigour without flaunting it. She doesn’t make Gothic costumes. Instead she gives us objects born of a Gothic informed sensibility and yet it is only one part of the puzzle. These clothes exist on so many levels. They are as visceral as they are conceptual. It was a lot of fun imagining these clothes going on and off. I don’t mean that in a sexual way but rather in an aesthetic sense. The fabrics are simple and yet they have depth. They are light and yet they have weight and you can hear them as well as being able to touch them. The sound these deceptively simple clothes make is one part of their complex and rich harmony.

The wonderful quality of sound is that it can be so many things at the same time and it can be received by  people in different ways at once even if they share the same space. It’s the opposite of Mark Rothko’s famous quote about silence being “so specific.” Martine Sitbon offers a rift on the audible as edited by reflectivity.

Experiencing fashion these days is not only about buying the clothes and wearing them. It’s about the whole process of conceptualising the idea of one’s self in those clothes and feeling connected to the way in which they are created and exhibited. The philosophy behind the product may reside beneath the surface but it informs the whole. What I remember of the defilé is the way black became metallic which in turn transformed to colour and eventually mutated to white and that all of it refracted back to a source of darkness which gave way to light.