Channelling Mad Max

DECONSTRUCTED and reconstructed, the urban warrior look is back.

IN a case of art imitating art, just weeks after labels Balmain, Rodarte, Gareth Pugh, Rick Owens, Haider Ackermann and Sass & Bide presented their warrior woman-themed collections for spring-summer 2010 came the news that Mad Max 4: Fury Road would start production.

The fourth instalment of writer-director George Miller's project starts filming next year, just as glossy magazines and trend-driven boutiques will be flush with the same deconstructed tribal style.

As the fashion industry emerges from the economic downturn, it's perhaps not surprising designers have found inspiration in survivors such as Mel Gibson's ex-cop Max Rockatansky and Tina Turner's Aunty Entity, the queen of Bartertown.

The Mad Max films depicted a broken-down feral society, full of outlaw men and fierce women, from model-turned-actress Virginia Hey in Mad Max 2 (1981) to the tyrannical Turner in Beyond Thunderdome. You can expect the tough looks that costume designer Norma Moriceau created for the second and third instalments to make a return in the fourth.

Less extreme but in similar vein, the power of Mother Nature has emerged as a central theme for spring-summer 2010 with designers homing in on earthy tones, tribal prints, utility wear and rustic references. While labels with an eye for generating sales explored nature's romantic side, innovators such as Haider Ackermann, Gareth Pugh and Dries Von Norten interpreted the nomadic look as a tougher urban uniform.

The warrior-woman aesthetic has been strong in fashion for several seasons now, as what observers have described as a pragmatic response to the economic downturn.

Gucci, Balmain, Balenciaga and Gareth Pugh are among the labels to incorporate leather, PVC, strong shoulders and angular cuts into collections designed to empower women in the face of fiscal uncertainty.

What is new about the spring-summer collections, and what makes them resonate with the costumes of Miller's films, is a more organic, even feral, feel in addition to the toughness.

Such was the case for Rodarte's spring-summer collection, which saw its designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy spin their own interpretation of Mad Max futurism by ageing, painting and shredding materials into ferocious style, while New York designer Alexander Wang included American footballer shoulder pads and utilitarian outerwear in his sportswear-themed show.

Givenchy, Proenza Schoulder, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga also presented strong stylistic takes on the natural world, McQueen most strikingly with his fantastical range using exotic reptilian skins teamed with enormous blunt snakeskin platforms.

Australian designers have always understood the raw appeal of feral fashion. Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton of Sass & Bide have built their empire with a tribal and primitive yet gilded aesthetic. In common with their forerunner Jenny Kee, Clarke and Middleton often find inspiration close to home.

"For our coming season we are drawing inspiration from the Australian landscape . . . textures and colours," says Clarke.

Like Moriceau, the duo have a taste for the organic, but boldly mix it with rock'n'roll and punk elements. Says Clarke of Sass & Bide's anti-minimal style: "Every individual is unique. We love giving women pieces to express their individuality. It's more about the confidence of the wearer than the design."

Part of Max Max's lingering aesthetic appeal is its confident clashing of different stylistic elements. It was a costume design milestone because Moriceau saw no limits in assembling a wardrobe world of excessive punk haircuts, bondage wear, heavy metal shoulder pads, chains, rock'n 'roll, nomadic warrior, neo-punk.

Some of her costumes were inspired by bondage gear from an S&M shop called The Link, which Moriceau lived near.

In the spirit of 1980s post-modernism, she created an organic style from whatever materials were to hand, including hockey masks and shinguards, biker boots and suits of armour made from football pads.

Today's grand mix-masters of style, Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquiere, also appropriated the art of bricolage for their spring-summer collections.

Both designers included so many stylistic alter egos that barely a fashion critic could agree on what the designers meant to say, other than that they were projecting new looks.

In 1985, Rolling Stone Magazine noted of Thunderdome's costume design: "The dress Moriceau concocted for Entity is an expressionist classic: a 70-pound (32kg) soldered amalgam of dog muzzles, coat hangers and chicken wire, the whole overlaid with gleaming chain-mail butcher aprons and accessorised with pendulant auto-spring earrings. The accompanying wig, styled to echo the movie's male plumage, required Tina to shave her head for proper fitting. She offered no protest."

Balmain's creative director, Christophe Decarnin,, currently the fashion world's reigning king, channelled Turner's Entity in his tough collection of combat fatigue and metal mesh-clad clothing presented in Paris.

Gone were the disco divas and their glisteningly bright coloured mini-dresses of his previous season, and in their place were looks including distressed military-style cast-offs, a belt impregnated with bullets, and leather pants studded with eyelets that are sure to sell for thousands of dollars despite their beat-up look.

"It's warrior women and the military, with a mix of different times and a touch of Mad Max," Decarnin told fashion media backstage after the Balmain show.

More conservative consumers are likely to recoil from Decarnin's confronting designs -- not to mention their staggering prices -- but Demi Moore is currently gracing the December cover of influential fashion publication W Magazine, and high street retailers are doubtless already working overtime to dilute Balmain's camouflage couture into price-friendly fast-fashion versions.

If the Paris-based Decarnin had only recently discovered Australian cinema and culture's raw appeal, he quickly made up for it by casting our supermodel du jour, Abbie Lee Kershaw, in his Balmain show. With her multiple piercings and tattoos, Kershaw presented a notion of modern beauty as an edgy mix of feral and rebel that perfectly complemented Decarnin's toughest runway looks.

How very Mad Max.