Hussein Chalayan traveled to all four corners of his imagination to muster a Resort collection that, along with the menswear, acts as a starting point for a seasonal journey that will climax in London this September.
Like the menswear, much of which was unisex, this collection was (deep breath) the semi-literal expression of a Chalayan train of thought that tried to excavate harmony from the discord of history by balancing his interpretation of geographically specific tropes against each other. So that lattice material you see, a really exquisitely produced Japanese fabric sometimes etched with an overlaid pattern, was meant to represent a “grid system and nature” that Chalayan identifies as northern. The sash-like straps that ran across the body were representative of “preservation and protection,” which Chalayan classified as an eastern aspect and linked also as a reaction to the Roman abduction of the Sabines—a horribly valorized act of violence the designer represented in the clever wrenched collar shape of jackets we also saw in menswear.
For Chalayan, west was represented in the individual silhouettes of the collection itself, very meta. His southern aspect, “hedonism and a kind of chaos,” was not really represented at all, for there was nothing chaotic in the careful folds, slices, and gathers that mapped out the idiosyncratic inlets of this designer’s creativity now. Sadly missing from the lookbook were pieces in a beautiful sunny yellow silk latticed with a green-stained pattern that reflected another idea of mapping and human geography. Abstract thoughts lead to clearly intriguing clothes.
