6A — Monday, September 18, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Thursday, Sept. 7 kicked off
the start of New York Fashion
Week, a biannual event where
designers debut their collection
for buyers and the press. New
York fashion week is the first of
the “Big Four”: London, Milan,
and Paris host the remaining
major fashion weeks.
Cushnie et Ochs
Cushnie
et
Ochs
is
an
American
fashion
brand
founded in 2008 by Parsons
grads
Carly
Cushnie
and
Michelle Ochs. The brand prides
itself on being a “By women,
for women” and is famous
for pieces with minimalistic
sophistication with a seductive
element.
Fashion has a problem with
trying too hard, attempting to
push the envelope at the cost of
ultimately creating something
creatively contrived and wholly
un-clever. Cushnie et Ochs’s
spring
summer
collection
provided necessary relief from
the over-designed collections
that are all too frequent on
the runways. The collection
succeeded on simple silhouettes
coupled with strong patterns.
Brandon Maxwell
Perhaps
most
famously
known as Lady Gaga’s stylist,
Brandon
Maxwell
launched
his luxury women’s ready-to-
wear label in 2015. Maxwell’s
transition from stylist to a
designer has been well received
by the fashion community; in
the short period of time since
his label launched, his designs
have
quickly
become a favorite
among
icons
such as Michelle
Obama, Gwyneth
Paltrow, Jennifer
Aniston
and
more.
Still a relatively
juvenile designer,
Brandon Maxwell
is
steadily
establishing
himself as one
of
New
York’s
coolest
by
consistently
offering up well
designed
collections.
This
runway show, only his fifth ever,
was no exception. His women
marched down the platform
ready to seize and conquer, be
it a boardroom
or
gala.
His
frequent use of
angora knits was
an untraditional
textile choice for
a spring summer
collection,
but
the
unorthodox
fabric
did
not
detract
from
the
collection.
The
collection
focused
on
vibrant,
monochromatic,
occasionally
neon
looks.
Despite the harsh color scheme,
his looks maintained an air of
professionalism, well-matched
with his intentions to “give
something that our customer
could wear to work, or to her
friend’s house on the weekend.”
Christian Siriano
Christian
Siriano
is
measurably the most successful
“Project
Runway”
alum.
In
addition
to
owning
an
eponymous line, he sits on the
Council of Fashion Designers
of America, arguably the most
prestigious fashion organization
in the world. He has recently
garnered applause for his more
inclusive style of dressing.
Christian Siriano made a
name for himself last year when
he volunteered to dress Leslie
Jones, of “SNL” fame, when
no other designer would. This
collection paid homage to that
incident in two parts. First he
invited Jones, who, according
to
Vogue,
showed
“raucous
enthusiasm for each piece.”
Second, he cast an array of body
types in his show — something
that should be neither shocking
or rare, but unfortunately is. He
didn’t draw much attention to
this fact, however, and instead
let the focus remain where it
should be: on his clothes. His
collection carried the energy
of the room well, his designs
all had an energy and a spark to
them. Sometimes the liveliness
derived from his electric choice
of color and pattern and other
times from sculptural elements.
If you want to leave a party
with a guarantee of not being
forgotten, he’s a designer to
turn to.
SIRIANO
MAXWELL
CUSHNIE
NYFW 2017 kicks off with a progressive vision
Style writer Tess Tobin provides us with an overview of the various designers that took the stage at the start of fashion week
TESS TOBIN
Daily Arts Writer
The collection
focused
on vibrant,
monochromatic,
occasionally neon
looks
‘Mario’ injects art & fun
into soulless commerce
UBISOFT
“Mario” is the latest from Ubisoft
The
blame
for
the
21st
century’s
greatest
humanitarian
crisis, Minions, falls squarely at
the feet of Ubisoft. Years before
Universal
Pictures’
yellow,
goggle-wearing
Lovecraftian
monstrosities
smuggled
the
evils of late-stage capitalism
into American homes by way
of slurpee cups, misshapen
backpacks and mobile phone
games meant to suck away
what meager resources the
American worker had left after
the financial crisis, (French
developer/publisher) Ubisoft’s
Rabbids were already chewing
their way through the wallets
of naive Wii owners in 2006.
Universal
took
notes.
The
Rabbids’ manic screams and
mediocre minigames haunt my
nightmares to this very day.
Back then, the Rabbids were
handcuffed to the “Rayman”
brand, some classic, really good
game series or something that
doesn’t sell anymore. Nowadays
the Rabbids have hit the big
time, starring in a crossover,
Mario and the Rabbids, with the
Mario characters — a very rare
instance in which Nintendo
allows a ‘B’ franchise to hang
with the big boys. This game
leaked a while back and nobody
was all that excited for it.
Weirdly
enough,
though,
my cynicism for this usually-
soulless series of products kind
of has to end there. This is a good
game, one that clearly has heart
and soul packed into it. That
was made clear in that famous
video where director Davide
Soliani
became
overcome
with emotion at seeing living
legend
Shigeru
Miyamoto
talk about his project onstage
at E3. Somehow, it seemed,
Ubisoft made a Rabbids game
not to exploit the characters’
marketability
but
because
an artist actually developed
passion for an idea.
That passion is immediately
evident
in
this
game’s
animation. From the opening
cutscene, it seems like more
love is poured into each frame
than usual. It’s hard to put
a finger exactly on what’s
changed, and using nouns like
passion and love to describe
in-game
animations
doesn’t
get us far in doing so. But it just
feels less soulless and grating
than that of previous games
like the Kinect and mobile swill
Ubisoft used to churn out.
It is not hyperbolic to call this
game “Duplo XCOM.” It is quite
simply a watered-down version
of XCOM’s famous turn-based,
squad-based strategy gameplay.
A team of Mario characters and
Rabbids dressed up like Mario
characters arrange themselves
on a battlefield and take shots
at baddies with cartoon-y laser
guns. There’s an extremely
simple cover system, which
strips some of the nuance from
how XCOM calculated aim
values (shots hit 0 percent,
50 percent or 100 percent of
the time, which kind of takes
away the thrill of gambling on a
risky shot). Enemy types evolve
nicely, if a teensy bit slowly,
over the course of the game,
which forces the player to
change up their strategies and
keeps gameplay fresh.
There
is,
of
course,
no
permadeath
in
“Kingdom
Battle,” a hallmark feature
of
the
XCOM
series
that
obviously wouldn’t make sense
in
Nintendo’s
kid-friendly
universe. Instead, the game’s
battles come with a rather
annoying
rating
system,
encouraging
the
player
to
complete missions with a full
party remaining in order to
be granted more coins for
their victory. However, where
XCOM is designed to actively
encourage continuation after
losses and toys with the players’
emotional attachments to their
party members in a meaningful,
effective way, there’s no reason
to press on in “Kingdom Battle”
after a pyrrhic victory. It’s
super easy to just reload the
encounter, and the weapons
bought with the extra coins
are so valuable that not getting
them makes you feel under-
equipped for future fights.
The highlights of this game
are the boss battles. They’re
incredibly diverse and are often
good digressions from the way
fights typically work. One in
particular takes the form of a
musical, complete with lyrics
written by Grant Kirkhope,
the renowned British game
composer
that
penned
the
“DK Rap” we all sing along to
in DK64, Melee and the opera
from “Conker’s Bad Fur Day.”
It’s cute.
Speaking of Kirkhope, the
man puts in soundtrack work
here that is beautiful, fitting,
and extremely nostalgic, giving
reverence to Nintendo classics
while coming up with a few
new classics of his own. Some
of the melodies aren’t distinct
enough, though — they feel
a little wandering, and I left
the game with merely a few
earworms to hum. Let me be
clear that the only reason I
feel comfortable giving such
an unfair criticism to a great
soundtrack is that Kirkhope
has the power to make every
single song in a video game a
memorable classic (see: both
Banjo-Kazooie
games).
He
didn’t quite do that here.
One more small criticism:
Playing
this
game
on
the
Switch’s
Tablet
Mode
isn’t
ideal. The proportions of the
characters to the map, the
hugely restrictive camera and
the mediocre UI make it so
the TV version is much more
manageable. It’s definitely not a
deal-breaker, but you’ll want to
play this one at home more than
you take it on the go.
Regardless, this game is
still a great B-tier release and
decent satiation for Nintendo
fans at the end of a Summer
quite starved for new Switch
games, Rabbids (and Minions)
be damned.
A digital review copy was
provided to the Michigan Daily
by Ubisoft.
JACOB RICH
Daily Arts Writer
STYLE
VIDEO GAMES
Mario +
Rabbids:
Kingdom Battle
Developed and
Published by
Ubisoft
Nintendo Switch
Exclusive