Hussein Chayalan: From Fashion and Back
Words by Sarah Brading
The current exhibition of the Cypriot born designer is being held at the Design Museum on South Bank to investigate and explore Chalayan’s renowned boundary pushing style. Spend an hour transported into new realms of possibility through Chalayan’s inquisitive and intelligent imagination.
Chalayan’s ‘Inertia’ S/S2009 collection investigates movement and speed. He has created a series of garments emphasising movement, culminating in an ironic final garment bearing images of wrecked cars and number plates. Perhaps this is Chalayan’s reference to the bleakness held in people’s futures due to current economic times.
Developments in new technology mean that the fashion world is becoming more scientific and technologically led. With Chalayan’s sometimes controversial method of manipulating fashion, including leaving a model completely naked in his ‘One Hundred and Eleven’ S/S 2007 show after his wearable contraption retreated and disappeared into her hat, Chalayan is using technology to alter fashion and how it is exhibited forever.
Hussein Chalayan has been considered a ‘technical wizard’ by Vogue online editor, Dolly Jones, reiterating the influence he has had on fashion, as it is obvious this designer is inspired and enthralled by the collaboration between fashion and technology. Chalayan shows anything is achievable, which, in this time of unpredictability, could prove to be an enormously positive statement.
So, the exhibition is very impressive and couldn’t have come at a better time. It is a font of inspiration for those who need it, and an exceptional, fun day out for those who don’t.
‘Hussein Chalayan: From Fashion and Back’ is on until 17th May 2009, Design Museum
Posted Wed, April 01, 2009