There was no shortage of color on the spring 2013 runways, but when we asked Thomas Bosket, a professor at Parsons The New School for Design and an expert in color theory, to analyze the designers’ choices of hues, he was more interested in the ways they used a lack of color. “Black is a looming presence,” he told ARTINFO after parsing recent fashion month photos. “It’s not neutral. Usually black is used more like a background or a backdrop. Here it’s being used to speak, here it’s an interloper. It’s interrupting the conversation.”
So why is black so pushy this season? Bosket theorizes that, like the rest of us, it just has to work a little harder in the current economy. “Matisse used black as a color, he didn’t use it as nothingness. You don’t fall through the canvas, it rises through the surface. It’s meant to give people a sense of security,” he said. “I just feel like things are tough, and if you see that lack in your daily experience, if black is used as it’s traditionally been used, as a nothingness, that’s scary. It’s a reminder of that lack.”
Bosket said to think of the new, friendlier black like the lines in a Mondrian painting, which stand out just as much as the bold shapes they’re supporting. Mary Katrantzou used blocks of darkness to structure her spring 2013 patterns, much like Proenza Schouler, whose network of inky lines Bosket compared to armor. And, like armor, black that’s used in a weak economy is meant to protect. “It feels solid,” Bosket said. “It feels like it’s rallying its forces. It’s pulling things together and hanging the rest of the colors off of this black hub, rather than a black hole where the color kind of shines out of it.”
Balenciaga used the non-hue to highlight form and structure, while Prada’s simple color palette offset the Japanese draping and asymmetry of the label’s spring 2013 collection. “They must have received the memo on the bold use of value, but as is expected, their great imbalanced sense of balance comes in handy here to create a totemic quirk,” Bosket said of Prada’s offerings.
Amidst all of this “black is the new black” talk, Bosket did point out that there was one designer who used the achromatic color in its more traditional role — Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen. “It’s used as nothingness. It definitely fell into the background,” he said. “The gold was like lace that you could see the body through.” It makes sense that the goth-glam label wouldn’t be afraid of sending its fans into the abyss, but, as Bosket said of black, “It’s better to feel buoyed by it, to feel like it’s pulling everything up.”
Click on the slideshow for more of Thomas Bosket’s take on spring 2013’s dark side. Plus, his thoughts on a few colorful looks.