New  York Fashion Week Day Five

I was so mesmerised – but not in a good way – by the stratospherically loud music at the Marc by Marc Jacobs show, that I was more concerned with my ears exploding to the sound of a thousand decibels of Johann Strauss’s The Blue Danube than with what stylists Luella Bartley and Katy Hillier had done in their second collection.

My eyes having been tortured with flashing bulbs from pyramid structures of scaffolding, it was tough to take anything away from the collection except the anger and energy of the show.

“Energy” is the key word. The design duo has shaken up violently what used to be the Marc Jacobs commercial brand. The boy-band-looking models strode out with in an androgynous wardrobe of splatter-spotted tunics, black on white, or a top defiantly rolled up to reveal a sky blue bra above draped pants.

A slogan T-shirt read NEW WORLD SYSTEM. The attitude was hyper-aggressive, but the mashed-up clothes were often quite sweet, as in a shirt and shorts in fuchsia pink or strapless party frocks. Shiny rubber leggings and circular bags, with a central hole, looked space-age Sixties.

I kept thinking of Stanley Kubrick, not just because The Blue Danube plays in his 2001: A Space Odyssey, but because of his 1971 movie, A Clockwork Orange, with its scary, youthful rage, violence and wild energy.

And even if I stuffed my ears with a scarf and had a miserable migraine for the rest of the day, I have to admit that there was something in this Marc by Marc show that grabbed the fashion moment.