Black Chandelier Quiet Army Fashion Show

When Jared Gold plans a big event, you can always count on there being a good measure of sheer spectacle, and spectacle there was at his Black Chandelier 'Quiet Army' Fashion Show last Friday night. An hour and fifteen minutes after the doors opened to throngs of followers the giant echo chamber Union Pacific ballroom was a wall-to-wall madhouse of fashion starved freaks and geeks, leigh bowery-esque drag queens, amateur photographers and tween-age indie rawkers, all waiting in anticipation for the show to begin. The Ladytron soundtrack escalated to earbleeding volume and with a bang, a huge backlit portrait of Gold wearing a toyland tophat and tux was revealed at the end of the runway to screams of delight.

The clothes and models that followed were some of his most sophisticated and playful yet. Edwardian collared jackets and ruffled pioneer pillowcase a-line dresses and jersey gowns melded with his signature screenprinting. Costumes for an enchanted evening with the criminally insane? Perhaps. Aside from a few fabric choices which didn't cohere as well as they might have on paper, resulting in disjointed silouhettes, the amusing voracity of the models paired with an audience - primed to delerium - made this one-time show nothing short of electrifying.