Jade Sarita Arnott bids adieu and farewell for another year
With palpitating surrounds, people’s endearment towards Australian designer and createur of Arnsdorf Jade Saria Arnott has been on the meteoric rise. From the cusp of her sharp yet diphaneous tailored women’s garments, to her extricable mélange of converging both structured and silk and linen based fabrics, her ensembles expose rather than conceal the pure and alluring je ne sais quoi. It’s not just the enticing colours however, as ever her growing loyal customer base must be as scrupulous, studiously peering into how the fabrications of her luxurious tapered trousers, long-sleeved vest jackets and silk buttoned blouses have been produced. Over her past few seasons as a creative designer, the dashing blonde 30 year old has wanted to reveal something more enriching about her clothes. When last year, in the eve of showcasing her ‘And You Love’ collection, she explained to Jeff Burch of The Spring Press that, ‘My design process is informed by everything from the music I’m listening to, the films and art I’m looking at, and my personal encounters during that time’. With many womenswear designers focused on marketing their clothes for fashion commercialism, Jade immediately detaches herself from this erroneous pathway by being informed. At the heart of her design manifesto is crucially this arresting nexus of Fashion Design and contemporary culture that have fused together notions of fragility, movement, personal emotion and projected and static art forms in varying media. Take for example, ‘And You Love’ again for which Jade describes in-depth that the considered and committed dance routines by ice-figure skaters nailed between the actions of courage and risk. And in her au courant attitude being immersed in literature also correlates well with street and public performer Frenchman Philippe Petit, who in 1974, scaled and walked between the then Twin Towers in New York City at 417m with lion-heart feet.
From being partly ignited by the writings of American filmmaker and writer Miranda July, whose book titled, ‘No One Belongs Here More Than You’ published in a number of international languages in 2007, Miranda’s own mental note documenting on paper was a chorus to the young womanly shapes Jade had created for this specific collection. The stark, high rise radiating sunlight would make a permanent effect – sheer blouses and cowl neck tunic dresses in ultramarine blue and vermilion red had the face of being the modern archetypal juxtaposed in a world dilapidated, highly-industrialised by factories and machinery.
There has been a continuance of an intelligent rigour that the clothes, the individual garments and the shapes they implore create an impactful and meaningful statement. But two other aspects spring into mine that have transpired across ‘Opticks’, the titled collection for which Jade has just as recently shown. Emerging is a fibre optic connection between herself and photographer Rene Vaile for which she has collaborated with closely on the direction of photography of her seasonal post-show lookbooks and colleteral. The stark natural and artificially created light glow from fixtures and sunlight conceals no details. Shadows volumise, shapes and curves appear. The tectonic and ridges of clothes and faces rendered. The beguiling light photographed for Jade’s past collections has evoked our own personal evocation towards ‘Opticks’, whose starting point for Jade has been the writings of Sir Isaac Newton. Whereby the mentioned scientist and author remarks reflections and refractions on his visual noted dossier, Jade could have literally and swiftly sewn Swarovski crystals on asymmetrical folds and panels for this new collection consisted of.
Not succumbed by easy design decisions, her new second home base in the entrenched artist/designer communes of New York City, Roanne Adams (the New York based art-director and graphic designer whose work came to fame through Lorick’s expansive set-design and rising star designer Timo Weiland’s Fall presentation) lent her graphical reportiore. As a result, the impreganted and revolving reflected refractions from a crystallised prism cocooned the silk fabric surface in shift dresses, protruding tetuonic skirts and a tied waist trenchcoat.
Jade’s new feat for the Opticks collection was sculpturing extrusions in that some of the printed dresses with crystalline formed sleeves in much the fact a rouge dress had inserted neoprene material. It was as if she furthered advanced the dress with a three-dimensional effect reflecting the creases and folds of her displayed show invitation. Other palpable colours of taupe, pale violet, beige and olive green may have conjured pigments that have defined the current zeigiteist only that this palette felt it genuinely imbued a gentle and personal confidence. The shades of brown mixed with green and rouge for example, are the amalgamated subversion in classics Jade has previously explained pertaining to durability and opulence.
The reserveness and innocence of the runway models parading the Opticks collection walked with utilitarian luxury, accompanied with a bejewelled quartz amethyst collaboration with Melbourne designer Estelle Dévé which became quintessentially contemporary. If only to fully embrace this mode, the only distraction was to use young, coquettish women who do adorn public avenues instead.
