It feels like Johnson Hartig and Cindy Greene dropped off the map, but at the presentation in their New York showroom, Hartig insisted that they've been beavering away as diligently as ever for the past four years. Still, something has clearly changed in their world. While the qualifier "on acid" has become one of the lazier clichés in the modern lexicon, this event was exactly that : Libertine on acid. From the red-coated Queen's Guards on the door, to the Civil War ensemble who tooted on flutes, to the clothes themselves, which mashed together Rasputin, Queen Elizabeth II , and the undead partygoers from "The Shining", the presentation was a trip. Not so much the romantic-gothic languor of old, but more a pell-mell collision of dressed up and broken down.
Hartig was particularly pleased by the bullion badges that wantonly littered coats and jackets. They looked military on a long gray coat, schoolboy on a blazer, but a closer look revealed unusual motifs : a duck, a deer, a dick. The faces of Rasputin and QEII were overprinted on everything from tees to cut-offs. Huge hand-knit rosettes ruffled the front of a velvet jacket. And an extravagantly striped three-piece suit cut from rep tie silk was the very antithesis of the monochromatic, rigorous Libertine of old. The collection quieted with a houndstooth coat worn over a chunky hand-knit hunting cardie (the outfit was completed by a plaid shirt and tux pants, so we're not talking too quiet). And a voluminous cape had some of the Dracula-drama of the past, although its embroidered rampant eagle connected it to the florid sensibility of this collection. The whole thing was mad, bad, and dangerous to know, in the best libertine tradition -and all the better for it.
Hartig was particularly pleased by the bullion badges that wantonly littered coats and jackets. They looked military on a long gray coat, schoolboy on a blazer, but a closer look revealed unusual motifs : a duck, a deer, a dick. The faces of Rasputin and QEII were overprinted on everything from tees to cut-offs. Huge hand-knit rosettes ruffled the front of a velvet jacket. And an extravagantly striped three-piece suit cut from rep tie silk was the very antithesis of the monochromatic, rigorous Libertine of old. The collection quieted with a houndstooth coat worn over a chunky hand-knit hunting cardie (the outfit was completed by a plaid shirt and tux pants, so we're not talking too quiet). And a voluminous cape had some of the Dracula-drama of the past, although its embroidered rampant eagle connected it to the florid sensibility of this collection. The whole thing was mad, bad, and dangerous to know, in the best libertine tradition -and all the better for it.
