Like a number of his savvy peers, Hussein Chalayan approaches his recently relaunched menswear as an extension of the story told by his women's collections for Pre-Fall. That's a logical thing to do, not just because the collections can then clarify and amplify each other, but also because Chalayan himself is a supremely logical designer. So he once again took inspiration from the 1974 movie Murder on the Orient Express, and once again very cleverly abstracted details from the film: the snow-capped mountain turned into a jacquard, the blizzard turned into a spattered flock pattern on a checked blazer or blouson, a map becoming a motif on knitwear.
One of Chalayan's particular skills is the way he can turn something that makes perfect sense to him but maybe no one else into a piece of clothing that can stand alone without any designer rationale. Who would even know that the motif on T-shirts and sweatshirts here was actually an old painting of his inserted into the silhouette of the detective Hercule Poirot solving the crime? Whatever, it looked great. In much the same way, Chalayan managed to slightly twist his military references to make pockets and closings more interesting. The shaped trousers in thick wool were also an army reference. And he continues to evolve his Transformer pieces, completely reversible jackets, designer detail on one side, plain on the other. Just the right balance of accessibility and edge.
