When it comes to the recent art exhibitions that have fascinated fashion elves, the British designer Hussein Chalayan's Chinese debut is enough to fill their interest.
For Chinese netizens, the name Hussein Chalayan does not seem to be familiar, so today Rui Sauce will come to popularize this great designer who can stand shoulder to shoulder with Martin Margiela and Alexander McQueen, who is not designing clothes at all, but is weaving a fashion dream with "black technology".
A graduate of Central Saint Martins School of Design in London, he turned fashion into "magic", and his designs still seem to people to remember.
For example, a dress that opens and closes automatically:
Skirts that will automatically open and dresses that can be automatically manipulated when encountering water:
Clothes that transform as soon as you pull during the catwalk:
But one of the shows that made Hussein Chalayan most famous came from the "After Words" fashion show in the fall and winter of 2000.
I saw a model walk into a white room and walk toward a round wooden coffee table, only to see her remove the middle part, stand in and slowly pull up the layered wooden planks, and finally fix it on her waist. She wore this "table dress" on display on the runway, and the applause from the audience was thunderous.
Hussein Chalayan used new techniques to break down the boundaries between architecture, furniture and fashion, adding a new page to the history of fashion, which also established his status as an experimental designer.
This breathtaking show is not only shocking, the sofa can also be "more than one dress", the dust cover becomes a dress, and the sofa is folded into a suitcase.
The showroom looks like a furniture display art exhibition, but in fact it is transformed into clothes and grows away with the departure of the model, leaving only an empty room and the audience's unlimited imagination space.
Behind the fashion show that became famous in the First World War is a childhood story from Hussein Chalayan: he and his mother have experienced war and displacement, and they need to take their luggage and flee at any time. So he derived the concept of all furniture on the body and moving freely with people in fashion.
Even today, people are keen to think about their relationship with living conditions, space, and self, so the show is frequently turned over to arouse people's lively discussions, which resonates.
But Hussein Chalayan can do more than this, the reason why he is called an experimental designer is because he not only uses breakthrough materials and technologies, breaks down the dimensions of fashion and technology, breaks down barriers, and combines with art that many designers today can't hope to achieve, which is very avant-garde.
From Hussein Chalayan's 1993 graduation work, he was destined not to be a fish in the pool.
The graduation work, titled "Cross-Section", buries the clothes in the ground and takes them out six weeks later, and the chemical reaction between the clothes and the dirt makes the fabric look rusty, a magical chemical reaction that Hussein Chalayan sees as the rebirth of life, a spirit of the fusion of clothes and nature.
In his first commercial collection released in 1994, he used air envelope paper to make a suit, a material that does not tear, washable and can write, and its design is inspired by Hussein Chalayan's childhood experience of being separated from his parents and communicating only by air mail.
In 1999, he made a dress out of this material, and it was amazing that the dress could actually be folded into an air envelope and mailed out.
In the Spring/Summer 2000 collection, he incorporated metal, glass and aviation materials into his collections. That unforgettable "airplane skirt" debuted.
I saw a little boy on the catwalk with a remote control to the skirt, a dress made of fiberglass and resin that bloomed like a flower.
Hussein Chalayan's stunning work allowed him to quickly establish himself in the fashion industry, and in the past two years, he has won the British Designer of the Year award twice in a row.
Stepping back in time to 2007, Hussein Chalayan showcased a series of skirts that can automatically change shape, and these highly sculptural design styles can be transformed into romantic straight dresses through hidden mechanisms inside.
And there's a bubble dress in the collection, and even Later Lady Gaga wore a similar dress on the Grammy red carpet.
Morphing skirts are nothing new here in Hussein Chalayan, and the skirt he designed with 15,400 LED lights and Swarovski crystal reflections is still fresh in the fashion circle.
He wants to use these lights to change the background of the costume at will, so as to vent his contempt for the wasteful phenomenon of the fashion circle.
On the Spring/Summer 2016 runway, Hussein Chalayan brought a set of water-to-water dresses that sprayed water on the top of the model's head, and the skirts began to melt into a series of flowing romantic dresses.
However, these amazing conceptual designs do not seem to be paying for in the consumer market. Gucci Group bought the majority of Hussein Chalayan's shares that year, and later bought back his own brand himself. But cash flow, brand management, advertising and fierce competition in the fashion industry have exhausted the designer, who is passionate about creating art.
After being squeezed by the faster, more street-trending fashion circle, in 2017, Hussein Chalayan sold a 20% stake to Centricus, and after introducing the investment, he hopes that he can have more time to specialize in design, and the brand can also rapidly expand the market under the injection of capital, which also includes the expansion of Chinese fashion.
This passionate storyteller, after establishing his strong experimental and humanistic design style, has formed a unique design language, which is also the beginning of his way of working and storytelling.
He doesn't seem to care about creating shocking works or playing the role of a rebel, he constantly tries to push the boundaries of the use of clothing materials and technology, take inspiration from the world, and express deep thinking through fashion.
He once said: "Everything in the fashion world has been repeated many times." I've long felt that the only way to make something new is to use technology. I was interested in style, but from the beginning I was more interested in doing something new, even when I was a student. ”
This mentality has been with him throughout his career, for him, breakthroughs and experiments are his nature, he deserves to be seen by more people, and it is worth playing in the current market. Let's listen to the story told by Hussein Chalayan and weave that fashion dream together!
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