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This exhibition is really worth the detour ! The Les Arts Décoratifs of Paris invite some of the most innovative and visionary designers of our time and that past, and today honour a marvellous exhibition featuring the works of Hussein Chalayan. What would the little black dress look like after the experimental and conceptual process that is Chalayan’s production method, a designer who places himself at the frontiers between fashion, architecture and design.
A high tech LBD
One year after graduating from the prestigious Central Saint Martins in Lonodn, Chalayan created his own brand and his first collection, Buried Dresses, a series of dresses dug out from the ground whre time and elements took their toll on the fabric, would give the tone to his resolutely visual perception of fashion. The reflexion behind each collection, every pice of clothing, is complex, personal, and quite simply incomprehensibe without an explanation. With collections entitled Airborne (presented in four parts, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, this collection draws a parrallel between the weather cycles and that of life and death), Ambimorphous (Chalayan decribes the aim of this particular work as being “to explore the shady territory between realism and surrealism, power and powerlessness”), Geotropics (this collection reflects upon the role of natural topographical features as well as human actions in defining a nation, creating a micro-geography though the body) or even Genometrics (an exploration of how the DNA of an individual in London could adapt according to its soundscape), as many different intriguing names that evoke an attraction to nature, science, research, humanity and evolution. Substituting some of his shows by video performances, Chalayan brings a whole new dimension to the meaning and form of a catwalk. He creates scenes and situations. A table that becomes a skirt and chair covers that turn into dresses in Afterwords, a dress made of fiberglass and resin cast into a form that reminds us of the body of an aircraft in the film Aeroplane Dress, and the sublime Floating Dress that finishes the Kaikoku Collection spectacularly, an automated radio-controlled polyester resin and fibre-glass matting gownpainted in highly metallic gold paint able to release fifty crystal “pollens” that decorate it, leaving them to float in the air like ideas waiting to seed and grow…are all to be seen with your own eyes.
