Das war ein headspinner. Even for this reviewer, who had the privilege of a lengthy conversation with Hussein Chalayan about the themes and motivations behind this collection—entitled Teutonic—when he rolled out its Pre-Fall preambles back in January, watching today’s show was a sometimes confusing trip.
At first, all seemed smooth. To a soundtrack of nosebleed techno (leavened with the odd sample of Annie Lennox singing “Missionary Man”), the first half of this collection was bravura Chalayan: a series of monochrome looks for men and woman that segued into gray flannel and knits in blue and bottle green. Although highly wearable, nothing was simple—shirtsleeves were gently boned to volumize them at the elbow; there was a false-fronted leather skirt worn below a ruched girdle below a tricksily shouldered shirt; military pockets were half obscured by folds on jackets. Yes, the models had ponytails of human hair pinned to their earlobes, but this seemed a slight if inscrutable conceit.
Then a scarlet-beamed Swarovski-drawn spotlight on a loose black dress signaled a shift in gear. A series of white looks in classic Chalayan silhouettes followed, all patterned with a soft and elusive arrangement of lines and writing—architectural drawings, perhaps? Two strong oily green looks later (including one outstanding fold-fronted jumpsuit) we drifted into a word print, then an abstract Swarovski geometric, then another spotlight, and finally a series of digital numbers on a background similar to that of Chalayan’s rendering of snowy mountains in his excellent Murder on the Orient Express collection from Fall 2015.
Backstage Chalayan was subjected to significantly more hard questioning than Donald Trump has been recently. Teutonic—why Germany? “It’s a culture we take for granted.” What were the shapes? “At first they were car dashboards and then they became spaceship dashboards. And I liked the idea of embroidering them to give them charm.” What were the lines? “There was this magazine in the ’70s, Burda, that used to publish patterns—I like the idea of printing the instructions.” And the writing? “Autobahn signs with German fairy tale words instead of destinations.” The numbers? “Digits, as if on the timer of a car as it drives through a landscape.”
The problem was that these clothes often transmitted a lot of information whose meaning was far from self-evident. Ironically in a collection that used signposting as decoration, there was simply not enough of it here for passengers to fix upon as the show propelled onward. You could tell from the group-chat reaction afterward that this detracted attention from some of the beautifully rendered sculptural pieces lurking in the first half. Next time, perhaps Chalayan should consider issuing some notes to explain the concept to his audience before the trip. Today that would have allowed attendees to appreciate the scenery unfolding in front of them, instead of wondering about the why-what-where of it.
