Christopher Kane Spring 2022 Ready To Wear Collection

He’s always taken an honest and clear-eyed attitude towards the role of fashion in the mating game—the hot topic which has suddenly risen again in these new days of pandemic-liberation fever.

So if you want sexual tension with an injection of sophistication, Kane is your man.

For spring he shot a show in a darkened London warehouse a couple of months ago. It opens with a strong, black patent: straight to the point of a furious kind of erotic chic. Kane girls don’t necessarily want to serve things up on a plate: His talent is for designing ways that play wickedly with all kinds of covert suggestions.

Right through the collection, there are devices for revealing skin—necklines in little black dresses that hint at fetish but are banded with protective metal; unconventional slits or port-holes in otherwise perfectly proper, covered-up dresses; a sporty crystal mesh miniskirt with a zippered slit.

Kane experiments with form, too—and that leads to all kinds of modern-looking techniques. One this season is his play with corrugated shapes—like a scarlet bra top and matching skirt armored with zig-zaggy 3D geometric frills.

The thing is, you never quite know where Kane’s references come from—but his career-long insistence on short, leggy going-out dresses means a glut of choices for original-minded girls who are finally, finally out and about at parties and whatnot.

One of the inspirations he did allude to is the life of ’50s sex-bomb Jayne Mansfield. She of the overspilling breasts—a controversial star who blatantly flaunted her sexuality and incredible body at a time when all that was highly disapproved of.

You glimpse her energy behind a diaphanous dress with a pink satin bra formed into sharp geometric satin points: provocative, yes, but also armored with self-confidence.