FASHION will not cease to exist even in a post-apocalyptic world.
Year Zero: Apocalypse Recoutured showed the rebirth of style through 105 clothing trends made by junior advertising students of the College of Fine Arts and Design. The show was held last February 24 at the SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia.
Advertising junior Patrick Franz Martin, chairman of the fashion show, said that Year Zero presents “innovative fashion trends in a post-apocalyptic environment,” where everything, including fashion, are being revitalized.
The new world that Year Zero portrays is a place with only a handful of survivors still adjusting to a very different environment, thus recreating the fashion trends of the past “to suit the style of the modern taste.”
Each of the seven third-year advertising classes presented their own sub-theme for the catwalk, which were inspired by different scenarios of apocalypse that might happen on Earth.
“Steam Allusion,” which is caused by exhausted nature, showed models wearing sleek, vibrant clothes, with angular cuts and metallic finish. “Meta Morphosus” portrayed models garbed in simple clothes made dazzling with the addition of plumage, feathers, metallic necklaces, and even barbed accessories on what would be genetically-engineered human beings.
Meanwhile, “Hippie Legion” had a softer side to the apocalypse, with loose apparel in striking colors of orange, ultramarine blue, lemon yellow, and chartreuse, while different shades of blue dominated “Cosmic Winter,” an end-of-days scenario in which an imbalance would among metal, ash, dust, and ice. The clothes had strips of fabric laid over another apparel and metallic blue finish for a chilling effect. “Trivolt!” confused a revolution of machines in which clothes also had metallic finish, but unlike “Steam Allusion,” the collection was dominated by the colors black, gray, and silver, on fur-textured clothes. Black and white were also the color motif of “Absolute Affliction” which evolved the scenario of a pandemic, and “Black Easter,” in which a deluge of lightning bolts destroy the Earth. However, the former mostly had tight fitting clothes, with head accessories such as shades, complicated headdress, and hoodies, while the latter had apparels with layers, ruffles, balloon skirts, and formal-inspired clothes for men.
Aside from the 14 clothes featured in each sub-theme, avant-garde apparels were also presented at the end of each presentation to serve as “the peak for every collection, but also as the outward manifestation of the designing sections’ understanding of their theme,” said in the souvenir program. An example of this was “Meta Morphosus’” where the model wore a black satin dress with lace overlay to allude to the colorful feathers of a pheasant.
The models were chosen from an audition of 500 applicants last December.
“The experience was fulfilling, for everything I imagined in our planning and preparation stage were all materialized exactly the way I thought it to be,” Martin said.
