Vice Style

Fam Irvoll is a Norwegian womenswear designer who's known for her innovative, playful approach to design. By that, I mean she usually makes clothes that would almost be on a par with Jim Henson's creations, had he used a tiny bit of his visionary genius for fashion, rather than wasting it all on brightening up the lives of children around the world, the selfish bastard. Last season, Fam's runway show was all knitted dresses with bulbous, knitted 3D heads where boobs and shoulders should be, children's party make-up, and fuzzy cyberpunk hair, so I was looking forward to seeing this year's collection strut down the runway in an inevitable barrage of colorful weirdness.         

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Pandemonium was there, which bummed me out, because I had a feeling that I would end up having to sit behind her, indirectly having my photo taken by hundreds of bloggers, then not being able to see the show over her 7ft tall costume. It's cool she makes an effort and all, but how long is it going to be until the powers that be allocate her a comically miniature front row seat so that everyone behind her can see?

This statuesque Lolita-cum-anime character was also waiting outside, having her photo taken by anyone holding a camera, so we thought we should take her photo too. The fact that her AND Pandemonium were attending got me really ramped up. 'This is sooo going to be the fashionably freakish collection of the year', I thought to myself.

I was wrong. The first few outfits were pretty out there, but in more of a preteen amateur fashion-blogger way than any of the mind-blowing, boner-erecting stuff that I'd been anticipating. Everything was ruined with a print that looked a bit like Moshi Monsters would if I tried drawing them on Paint, which is totally fine if you're my six-year-old cousin—who would've gone wild for this shit, by the way—but not if you're a grown-ass adult with working eyes. 

The pink printed trousers were just about passable, owing to the fact that the print wasn't of cycloptic baby dinosaurs, but the toothy monster skirt quickly put everything back into perspective. Before, Fam might have had two squishy, googly-eyed monsters protruding from each buttock, which is childish, sure, but in a ludicrous way that would make you want to stick your finger in each toothy mouth. This time round, her monster lacked any amount of personality that a skirt monster is capable of having, and you'd probably get arrested for putting your finger in its mouth, which always sucks. The customised Underground creepers were pretty amazing, though. 

    

Models were wearing metallic lipsticks and eye-shadows in pink, blue, and yellow, and had their hair styled in a way that reminded me of Chris Tucker's character in The Fifth Element. You can't fault that, because it did give the models a bunch of those kooky, otherworldy vibes that the clothes were so desperately trying to convey—plus, the styling in that movie is untouchable—but it just made the clothes look more and more like the inside of a children's playpit, rather than locking down what could have been a kick-ass collection inspired by aliens, or whatever the hell those things are supposed to be.    

Towards the end of the show's first section, the prints suddenly stopped, and out came these amazing, dip-dye-esque pastel dresses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dip-dye is so over on hair, but on dresses it's not nearly as played-out. The human-squid hybrid bags were pretty fun too, I guess, but I'm almost 100% certain that I'd hate anyone who actually wore one off a catwalk.

Last up was the kid's collection, Little Cupcakes, which consisted of patterned puffa jackets, hoodies and all-in-one pajama suits. The reaction from the room was mostly a resounding, "Awww", except for two snooty fashionista dudes in the front row, who seemed beyond mortally offended that a child would dare model children's clothes. Those types of guys are on a whole new plane of fashion, though, so I'm sure there's a legit reason why that whole situation was NOT ok. 

Obviously, the words sass and swag have been ruined by middle class white kids desperate to appear black on the internet, but this girl had both in bucket loads. At one point, she did this insane, forward-moving moonwalk thing that finally made me realize dance didn't abandon me when Jacko passed, I just hadn't been going to enough fashion shows. 

The patterns looked great on the kids, something that only accentuated how increasingly Punky Fish the older models were looking, while they stood at the back of the runway and tried to get the whole crowd to clap along to "Ghostbusters". 

Maybe my expectations for the weirder stuff were too high going in, but all of the less conventional stuff, if you can really call it that, was just toe-curlingly lame, which is a little dissapointing. Fam usually does the whole playful, teasing-nostalgia-out-of-you thing really well, but this time that stuff was just a little too tween. Granted, everything did start to make more sense once the pastel dresses and kid's collection got rolled out, and hey, there was some free hair soufflé in the goodie bag, which just opened up a whole new realm of hair-styling options for me, so not all is lost.

 

PHOTOS: DANIELLA MAIORANO
TEXT:JAMIE CLIFTON

TAGGED: London Fashion Week, Lfw, Fam Irvoll