The invitation to this season's Meadham Kirchhoff show came with a note scrawled on the back: "Reject everything!" That turned out to be an accurate, if not entirely complete, précis of the show to come. After several buoyant seasons in a row, all of them filled with buyable things, Ben Kirchhoff and Ed Meadham decided it was time again to rage against the machine. This collection was punk—not just in its slashed tees and seemingly scavenged materials, but also in its no-holds-barred renegade attitude. It was there in the clothes: the sliced-up latex, the oversize jackets that looked like they'd been made from dirty towels, the bullet-tit knits, the sheet white dresses with dangling red string, which had unavoidable menstrual connotations given the "blood"-dipped tampons that were part of the show's decor.
The collection defied you to find it beautiful, and yet…it was. There was beauty in the Meadham Kirchhoff signature chiffon dresses, here scrunched up as if in anger and worn in ersatz ways. There was beauty in the eyelash-trimmed jackets made from the kind of shiny material used in recycling bags. And there was beauty of a particularly sales-friendly sort in the collection's deconstructed patchwork shirting, like the short shirtdress pinned askew and skirted in asymmetric pleats. Meadham and Kirchhoff were explicitly rejecting commodification this season; the collection was meant to be alienating. But you didn't have to work too hard to spot things women (and men, who modeled some clothes) would spend cold, hard cash on, such as the articulated bombers in a squishy fabric normally used as automotive padding. Likewise, the duo's bonkers sweaters are destined to be cult items. And, like their bonkers dyed furs several seasons past, they seem destined as well to distill, via other designers, into a look that's mainstream.
It's hard to reject everything. It's hard to unplug from the grid. And anyway, this show wasn't, in the end, so very rejectionist. The casting made the point best: all shapes, all colors, all sizes, all sexes—and all plugged impartially into the electric current of Meadham and Kirchhoff's joyful rage. Joyful! Their show was a celebration, a rebellion, a temporary autonomous zone. It was inclusive and free—carnivalesque in the Bakhtinian sense. You were tempted, in your own hand, to add a note to the back of the invitation: "Reject everything. Embrace everyone."
Read Sarah Mower’s review of Meadham Kirchhoff’s Spring 2015 ready-to-wear fashion show.