Marc Jacobs Just Gave Us a Hallucinatory Daydream

Under a sky of heavy, surrealist clouds, as the audience perched on pale blue-green stools that looked like a field of mushrooms, Marc Jacobs sent a strange, diaphanous fall collection down the runway. While Jessica Lange chanted the creepily utopian lyrics to Milton Ager's "Happy Days are Here Again," the models strode past the audience in cold, alienating hair and makeup, wearing clothes that looked like something out of a seventies cult. It was a hippie daydream with a weird edge, as though we'd all taken a hit of bad acid — but not that bad.

Perhaps even more surprising than the off-putting soundtrack and strange pastels for fall was the sudden appearance of one Kendall Jenner on the runway, looking every bit the model and not at all like a Kardashian with her bleached brows, severe bob (a wig), and — collective internet gasp! — a deep v-necked, see-through shirt. The serious, slightly brainwashed expression on her famous face fit right in with the theme of the night. Are happy days here again? Or is Jacobs playing with irony? It was hard to know what to believe.

The sheer simplicity of some of the clothes conjured up the uniformity of the cult, as though the models were working side by side in the communal garden before gathering around for their evening chants. That's not to say the clothes weren't chic, they were just...monotone.

Then there were the furs, in fakey pastels, but flung over shoulders like a recent kill — had the druggie sisterwives gone hunting?

A series of sequined looks had nothing to do with partying and more with the shapes and colors of hallucinations.

Even the gauzy, layered pastels had a disconcerting, Alice in Wonderland-on-shrooms quality. What was fabric? What was skin?

But from the carpet to the soundtrack to the lighting, every element of the show fit carefully into the fantastical sect that Jacobs had created, and the effect was weirdly mesmerizing. We gotta say, we're kind of thinking about drinking the Kool-Aid.

Images: Getty Images