HUSSEIN CHALAYAN – From fashion and back

The news of Chalayan’s impending exhibition at the London Design Museum was a great thrill to an architect like me. Finally I would be able to see, in one place, at one time, the highlights of his futuristic collections since graduating from St. Martins College of Art and Design in 1993.

And so it was with great excitement that I made my way through twelve inches of snow on the South Bank last week, to visit “From fashion and back”.

Twice named British Designer of the Year, Cyprus born Chalayan is still rather unknown outside of the fashion industry, although his recently acquired role in Puma as Creative Director, and the investment of the Gucci Group of which Puma is a part, shall surely catapult this cosmopolitan cosmonaut into another orbit entirely. Already Chalayan is taking tea with the Zaha Hadid’s of the design world, as he constantly blurs the boundaries of fashion, film and art, by making a point of side projects and exhibitions to augment his conceptual design process.

Chalayan’s final collection at St. Martins, comprising of, amongst other things silk dresses that had been doused in iron-fillings and buried for months before being exhumed, was a showstopper and launched his career with an intelligent flair for innovation and depth that continues unabated. These were the first items on display, predictably, and they still look delicious!

Inspired by issues of migrancy, displacement, ethnic-versus-cosmopolitan identity, technological progress and genetic engineering, it could be easy to dismiss Chalayan’s output as camp sci-fi wardrobe design if it were not for his meticulous pattern cutting and visionary embrace of new technology. Having said that, his latest (spring/summer 2009) collection entitled INERTIA is probably the weakest on show, but of course this is relatively speaking.

INERTIA is inspired by the senseless speed of production in the modern world where speed takes on a value in and of itself. The outfits take on the form of garments over bodies frozen in the “event” of a car crash. Not a pretty picture.

Elsewhere however, READINGS (the stunning red lazer dress), PLACE TO PASSAGE (film showing journey from London to Istanbul in a personal pod) and AMBIMORPHOUS (garments that evolve from “little black number” to full-on Turkish ethnic dress) are the breathtaking showstoppers I expected them to be.

Stangely, his most static and indefinable collection, PANORAMIC (Autumn/Winter 1998) was the most resonant, and this is ten years later. The figures emerging from mirrors in strange insect-like uniforms with huge ‘cone-dome’ headpieces are said to represent the erosion of personal identity that corporate and national institutions can cause.

In general the exhibition was poorly lit, and could have had a more interactive feel about it, given Hussein’s ability to engage with the world of multimedia.

There is something to be said too, for seeing a collection of garments worn in public, for the first time, on live breathing models. The London Design Museum was more of a mausoleum, and with Puma and Gucci behind the show, one would have expected more.