There is currently a new exhibition on about Hussein Chalayn at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs, accompanied by a new book featuring over 200 colour illustrations that examines the designer’s fashion and creative works.
The volume, entitled Hussein Chalayn by Hussein Chalayan and published by Rizzoli, looks at his early beginnings, at the inspirations behind his works and at his more recent creations.
The retrospective at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs is entitled instead “Récits de mode” (Fashion Narratives, until 21st November 2011) and, while it doesn’t follow any chronological order, it includes Chalayan's most famous pieces.
Visitors will be able to see creations from his 'Geotropics', 'Echoform' or 'Before Minus Now' collections, together with more recent designs including pieces from the S/S 09 collection, entitled 'Inertia' and inspired by the idea of speed and its consequences, and from the A/W 2010-11 'Mirage' collection, inspired by a trip through the States and sparking up a dialogue between identity and place.
The S/S 2011 designs that moved from Japanese poetry and theatre and from the more surreal aspects of the Japanese culture - one of them being the 'Sakoku', a term relating to the policy of isolation during the Tokugawa Period, when the country was closed to the outside world - are also included.
The exhibition also features the remote controlled “Floating Dress” made in collaboration with Swarovski, part of the 'Kaikoku' collection (A/W 2011), a term referencing this time Japan’s opening to the Western culture.
The golden fibreglass and polyester resin “Floating Dress” can move around and release crystals symbolising pollen, used as a metaphor for the pollination of ideas and the quest for a new beginning.
Chalayan comes out as a visionarily innovative designer, probably the one and only contemporary designer who managed to produce timeless experimental pieces bridging fashion and technology in an extraordinarily original way.
To celebrate the exhibition I’m republishing in today's post an interview with Chalayan I did for Zoot Magazine when the “Hussein Chalayan Works 1994 – 2009” exhibition opened at London’s Design Museum.
The interview was entitled "Chalayan's Lexicon" and tried to trace a sort of alphabet in his creative career, unveiling his philosophy and inspirations and discovering how there’s more than just conceptual ideas behind his designs.
About Monumental Ideas
Wearable, saleable and sexy. These were the three main adjectives that recurred in the fashion media reports describing Hussein Chalayan’s Autumn/Winter 09 collection presented in March at Paris Fashion Week. For all those journalists who superficially thought Chalayan was stuck in a world of his own where only conceptual designs exist, the collection represented a breath of fresh air. But for his fans, it was a confirmation that the London-based designer is able to produce both avant-garde and stylishly saleable designs.
Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Chalayan moved to England when he was 12 and, in 1993, he graduated from Central St Martins. His graduate collection, called 'The Tangent Flows’ (1993) featured garments that explored the concepts of change and decay made with fabric he buried with iron fillings in a friend’s garden.
Further ideas were explored in later designs and Chalayan described as “monuments” to ideas three dresses from consecutive collections he did between 1999 and 2000.
The first dress, from his ‘Geotropics’ (Spring/Summer 1999) collection, was made in resin and reminded of a chair that cocooned the model’s body, while symbolising the idea of the itinerant existence; the second “monument” was the airplane dress from the ‘Echoform’ (Autumn/Winter 1999-2000) collection that featured moving flaps activated by a switch operated by the model; the third outfit, part of the ‘Before Minus Now’ (S/S 2000) collection, was operated by a remote control that could lift the rigid flaps of the dress, revealing a froth of pink tulle underneath.
As the years passed, Chalayan’s collections turned into explorations of different themes, from nature to technology and architecture.
Named British Designer of the Year twice (in 1999 and 2000) and awarded an MBE for contributions to fashion in 2006, Chalayan became well-known for taking his inspirations from ideas that are not usually associated with fashion, such as exile, alienation, power and powerlessness, nomadism, cultural displacement, transformation, DNA sequences, anatomy, individuality and visions of the past in the future.
These complex and at times subversive themes were explored in the fashion show for his ‘Ventriloquy’ (S/S 2001) collection with its interplay of virtual and real narratives; in the garments from ‘Medea’ (S/S 2002) symbolising with their copious zips and ties an oppressive state of mind; in the ‘Genometrics’ (A/W 2005-06) collection with DNA chains inspiring the bulbous silhouettes of the outfits and in the more technological designs from Chalayan’s ‘One Hundred and Eleven’ (S/S 07) collection featuring dresses that morphed through different decades - from the early 1900s to 2007 - automatically transforming in shape and style thanks to a computer system designed by the London-based engineering and concept-creation firm 2D3D.
Back to Fashion
One installation at the recent “From Fashion and Back” exhibition organised at London’s Design Museum and celebrating Chalayan’s 15-year long career, explored the limitations of language and featured three dummies wearing the minimalist tunics from the ‘Panoramic’ (A/W 1998-99) collection, painting a wall.
Though engaging with the space, the figures couldn’t actually see what they were doing as egg-shaped headpieces constricted their heads and entirely covered their faces, while a dummy clad in a black dress and cape kept guard over them. The way the collections were exhibited mirrored in a way Chalayan’s approach to his work.
Indeed when he designs Chalayan doesn’t focus only on the garments, but also on their meaning. “The event showed how different worlds relate to each other, how everything is interconnected,” Chalayan explains, “my work is a reaction to things that happen in the world - in history, anthropology, science, technology - it represents a merging of all these worlds which is what makes the work unique.”
Creating bridges between different worlds and disciplines is what Chalayan enjoys best: “People are not sure where to place my work,” he states. “It is interesting when a school of architecture uses my designs as a basis for student projects – choosing garments based on geography, identity and culture and asking the students to create an environment based on these clothes. But academia is spreading beyond people who teach, more members of the public are appreciating the processes and research behind design.”
Does it bother him then the way the fashion media often portray him as an avant-garde designer? “Sometimes, I feel that there are a handful of people in the fashion media who have no vision but who are allowed to rule the industry,” he replies.
“It is about time fresher blood with more vision is given more of a chance. As far as my work is concerned, there is a certain duality. I feel there are monuments in each project that emphasises an idea. But, mostly, they are monuments which exist to inspire the rest of the collection which is highly wearable and flattering.”
Among the best pieces exhibited at the Design Museum there were the furniture-morphing dresses from his ‘After Words’ (A/W 2000-01) collection and the ‘Airborne’ laser dress made of Swarovski crystals and LED lights from his ‘Readings’ collection (S/S 08). The former were inspired by the news from Kosovo about people fleeing their houses in a rush during the war, but also by his own experiences as a Turkish Cypriot living abroad; the latter was a reference to the culture of sun worship and the cult of celebrity.
As a whole the event was very important as it allowed visitors to get to know all the most important projects the designer was involved in: since 2003, Chalayan also directed art projects, including the short films “Temporal Meditations”, “Place to Passage” and “Anaesthetics” and, in 2005, he represented Turkey at the 51st Venice Biennale with “Absent Presence”, featuring Tilda Swinton.
“Catwalks are for a limited audience and art projects were only shown in galleries,” he says, “so this was an amazing way to show so many projects in one place and, specifically, in London where everything has been conceived.”
Conceptual Vs Commercial
Chalayan’s creative process doesn’t usually start with choosing the fabrics or experimenting with silhouettes, but with an idea, a concept.
“I am more an ideas person. The idea is born first, the aesthetic is innately there in everything I do,” he claims. “A collection is very much about a narrative, a form of storytelling involving different themes which evolve from, or react to, the idea before. They can be monumental themes which I arrive at gradually. The shows are designed to be a cultural experience for the spectator with sections reading as chapters.”
His current S/S 09 collection, entitled ‘Inertia’, is inspired for example by the idea of speed and its consequences. “It is always a challenge to materialise what you have in mind,” he says. “For this collection -which is about speed in our life resulting in a crash, about the surgical element of the body and car - we worked with engineers to produce the airbrushed painted latex foam dresses. Basically, the idea is the interaction between the body and crash as a result of speed.
Transcending that concept, the woman’s body is more prominent.” Chalayan’s ‘Inertia’ featured mini-dresses with hand-painted prints of crushed cars complete with plates, taken from car grave pictures.
The print worked at its best on the most rigid and body-conscious dresses or trouser suits and jackets that seemed to protect the models as if they were pieces of automobile body work, but it amazingly gave an incredible look also to the most ethereal chiffon pieces such as evening gowns and blouses. At the very end of his show, a group of models stood on a revolving platform, the foam spikes protruding from the back of their dresses frozen in mid-air in aerodynamic motion as if caught in a pre/post-collision space/time vortex while wine glasses at the back of the catwalk were smashed to recreate the terrible sounds of a fatal crash.
Speed is also the basic principles behind fashion: in the last few years the industry radically transformed, focusing less on creativity, Chalayn highlights, and a lot more on power.
“It seems anyone can become a designer nowadays, if you have money, you can hire a designer and call yourself a designer,” he states. “My way of working has always been more or less the same as everything comes from the ideas I have when I start a new project. But, business-wise things have changed a lot in my company since I started my partnership with Puma that will enable us to take projects a lot further and market them. ”
Puma - owned by the French multinational holding company PPR - that boasts among its subsidiaries many luxury brands such as Gucci - is a big group with many style categories and this will allow the designer, nominated in 2008 the brand’s creative director, to develop with it both technical and aesthetical innovations.
“With this partnership and the access to PPR’s infrastructure and facilities we have already launched a shoe collection and a pre-collection and many other projects will follow,” Chalayan anticipates. “I feel that my role is to add a new perspective, but also to preserve what is working already in harmony with new things to come. Sportswear has a lot of potential to introduce innovation into garment design more than any other category of apparel, as processes often employed for durability are technology-based. I would like to introduce a multifaceted way of designing to Puma where we will embrace many disciplines in order to develop brand new ways of thinking about clothes and the changing world that we live in.”
Down to Earth
At last year’s “Skin+Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture” exhibition at London’s Design Museum, Chalayan’s works were compared to those of architect Thomas Heatherwick and, a while back, the designer was also invited to speak about art and architecture with Zaha Hadid at London’s Tate.
Architecture is another discipline Chalayan drew inspiration from for his designs. “Everything that surrounds me is a source of influence,” he explains, “I am ultimately inspired by beauty. But it can be said that my work is a gap between fantasy and reality. I always feel that a cross-disciplinary approach to design leads to more interesting results. However, the processes which create a collection are there to create a base for the designer. People who wear the clothes do not always need to know about this process.”
Yet it’s fascinating to hear about the processes that led Chalayan to specific designs: for his A/W 09 collection, entitled ‘Earthbound’ and inspired by the principles of building engineering, he created concrete buildings for the body with the help of high-tech fabrics and foam employed to mould rigid and sculpted silhouettes for his coats, jackets and dresses.
The designer also managed to inject in his wearable “buildings” a strong sensuality, opting for ultra-short and body hugging dresses matched with thigh-high waders supported around the thighs by leather straps.
As a child, Chalayan reveals, he was attracted by the power of the body, “I was so excited about anything to do with the body and I was brought up mainly by women which perhaps helped to fuel this fascination,” he recounts, “I started to create narratives around the body. In my culture, a lot of emphasis is placed on going out and looking good, it is a hot environment, which also creates a sexual charge around the body which always fascinated me. I guess fashion for me was the closest thing which celebrated the body and that’s why I decided to study it.”
The final grey wool dresses that incorporated leather moulded breasts and bottoms in red, green, yellow and nude – produced by Allen Jones for the London-based theatrical costume studio Whitaker Malem – perfectly incarnated Chalayan’s interest in the architecture of the body.
But there was also a strong play on dichotomies in this collection: the solid leather bustiers and derrières of the moulded outfits contrasted with the fragility of the models who wore them, while dresses in light fabrics featured prints of rock, gravel, metal beams and scaffolds or embroideries made with wooden and metallic sequins, solid and hard materials employed in construction sites.
The name of the collection also seemed to be a reference to the fact that Chalayan kept his inspirations down to earth and opted for less conceptual outfits while consistently following his beliefs, that is originality, quality and experimentation. And it’s exactly by respecting his principles and staying true to himself that Hussein Chalayan always managed to chronicle in his work the dramatic changes and transformations society goes through, allowing us to ponder upon them through his more conceptual pieces while providing us at the same time with wearable, timeless and impeccably cut designs.
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