NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

By TOM BLOOMFIELD

Nature's first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay. 

(Robert Frost, 1923)

As a boy - a younger one than I am now - I remember travelling to Paris for the first time. On my last day, walking through the city’s characteristic cobbled streets, I found myself lost amongst a sea of people who were drawn in by a cluster of market stalls. Suddenly overcome with that well known tourist-desire that one only experiences in a foreign place of wonder and intrigue, I found myself yearning for a souvenir that would remind me of the beautiful Parisian surroundings. Noticing a nearby flower stand, I foolishly bought a single white rose - similar to those that crept round the cracks of the decaying street walls - oblivious to the fact that this ‘souvenir’, despite its tough appearances, would likely perish before I had even returned home.

As I returned to my family, my mother pointed out the mistake I had made but decided that she would have the rose pressed and framed in glass to preserve it long enough for my memories to take precedence over the gesture of the souvenir itself. After several years, the petals of the rose have slightly withered, the leaves have browned and torn, yet the essence of the flower has remained. The beauty the flower once had has taken a new form; it has now become a two-dimensional piece of art, its nostalgic beauty has been preserved, but a more sinister aura has arisen out of its ability to defy nature’s temporal grasps. 

Many floral-inspired, intricate couture pieces - notably those within Alexander McQueen’s SS07 collection - represent the tragic temporal nature of the flower and the impending decay of the new season’s (whether it be fashion or weather) arrival, due to their inability to stand the test of time and their unwearable appeal. However, the delicacy of these couture garments, along with the well known soft, pastel-inspired florals that consumed many Spring/Summer collections, have been preserved in the prints of several tougher, AW11 Ready-to-Wear pieces that transcend the seasonal elements of both nature and style.

Here, as with my Parisian rose, the delicate beauty of the flower has been compressed into a two-dimensional form - most notably forming prints on dresses, shirts and jackets, adding a brighter feel to the colder, wetter months. However, these are not the same pastel florals that we have bared witness to in Spring/Summer; instead, the prints are darker and more sinister as thicker fabrics, sharper shapes, blacks and dark greens are integrated into the collections. James Small highlights this transcendence in his AW11 menswear collection by fusing bright, floral patterns with darker tailoring to mix the temporal with the traditional. Prada’s SS12 menswear collection and Mary Katrantzou and Hermione de Paula’s AW11/12 collections see similar patterns mixed with black to create an emphatic sinister feel that differentiates itself from the innocence these florals once connoted. Katrantzou explores an obscure, structured silhouette that diminishes the memory of last season’s floaty chiffons, whilst Hermione de Paula chooses the rose to inspire her floral prints, infusing her collection with jets of blood red. Here, the lighter, floaty silhouette of Spring/Summer continues, but the colour scheme and the tormenting tips of the roses’ thorns connote a menacing loss of innocence. Ashley Isham’s AW11/12 collection takes us into the fantasy world of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where dark greens, tempting shapes and impish headpieces inject the collection with thoughts of dark dreams and forest fantasies. 

Floral prints, intrinsically connected with a coinciding depiction of femininity, have thus adopted a more threatening, tougher undertone. The flower is no longer a delicate assortment of pastel-pink petals and draping chiffons, but instead it is one that can withstand the harsher weather conditions of Autumn/Winter. It, as with the woman who wears it, has seen brighter, innocent times yet now faces tougher climates of cascading down-pours, billowing winds and frosty nights as the new season looms ahead. In other depictions, the flower’s preservation is less glorifying as we are reminded that, whilst the toughest flower prevails, the more delicate petal drops and decomposes in the ground, providing powerful nutrients for the lucky few that are able to thrive from its demise.

In Erdem’s AW11/12 collection, a slurry of patterns and dark, mulched colours remind us of  these decomposing flowers and a compost of decaying petals that squelch under our feet and weld together in the rain. The patterns seem reminiscent of Monet’s sludgy watercolours whilst the mottled colour palette once again fuses blacks with bottle greens, blood reds, muted purples and faded oranges, which are used to a similar effect in Basso and Brooke’s AW11/12 collection. 

It may seem, then, that the beauty of Spring/Summer’s floral print has survived, but with a closer glance, as with my rose, the test of time has produced a more menacing adaptation. As the floral print transcends the seasonal boundaries of fashion, we are reminded of the instability of the world in which it lies. As a flurry of new graduates is pumped into the system each year, the seemingly beautiful yet delicate may fall, whilst the tougher, more sinister may survive.