One of the enduring fascinations of Hussein Chalayan's work is the multiple interpretations it inspires. His and yours, for a start. The designer called his Resort collection Moors Chorus. On name alone, that could be songbirds in Yorkshire. Mercifully, though, it began with an image of a courtyard in a church in Seville—shadows cast by orange trees on Moorish tiles—and fanned out into a typically odd but charming group of references. The chorus idea came from the repeated patterns of those tiles, which Chalayan thought of as something quite musical. But his use of the patterns was unexpected and subtle: laser-cut overlays, organza dappled with pigment. He was in love with the idea of the gaze, the glimpse you might catch of something beautiful—a veiled woman, perhaps—through Moorish latticework. There was an alluring delicacy to the way Chalayan translated that notion into pristine layered looks. Maybe less so with a print of courgette flowers, also revealed in a lattice pattern.
That unlikely subject matter ("The sensuality of something you eat," was the designer's rationale) didn't quite hit the spot. A print made from an aerial view of irrigation systems sounded equally unpromising but was abstract enough that it resembled a summery mosaic. That peculiar cerebral/sensual alchemy is Chalayan's signature. It was also visible here in the unusual shapes and complex cuts that looked as easy as pie once they were on the body. But cerebral took a definite backseat to sensual with Chalayan's torso-limning bustier in bonded cady silk.
