“The theme this season is pretension. Pretension can be the product of imagination, something that takes you to other realms. But the word is often used in a pejorative way, especially about class. I wanted to look at it in a true way.”
So said Hussein Chalayan at the shoot for this Pre-Fall installment of the three-parter that will run on to menswear and then womenswear Fall 2019. In addition to unpacking the notion of pretension, this collection was about picking apart the word itself: inserting a hyphen between pre and tension to give extra emphasis to his long-refined flourishes of structural virtuosity in the extra ribbons of material that floated down sleeves or the flying buttresses of panel overlaid on seam-reduced skirts and dresses.
The thematic nodes of pretension that Chalayan interrogated included Hyacinth Bucket–ish (British reference alert) bourgeois aspiration via overprinted tree jacquards meant to reflect uppity wallpaper, strapping details and flashes of pleather shine that hinted at fetish and role-play, and mumsy check double-faced cashmere outerwear and classic tailoring shapes that cantered through equestrian territory. Apart from his constantly provocative personal codes of architecture—really, nobody else builds clothes like Chalayan—the surprising parts of this collection came when he toyed with the boundaries of taste that his theme allowed him to explore: A wallpaper botanical overlaid over an Aztec-ish zigzag on a pair of full pants was both difficult to look at and impossible not to. This theme will develop over the next two collections, but already it feels ripe with uncomfortably interesting potential.
