Hmm...is that actually a sporran plunked in the middle of that black velvet tuxedo coat? Albeit a sort of glittery sporran, slightly displaced upwards, with a sparkly cascade of dangles? It’s like this, when one’s looking at a Christopher Kane collection, holding your head this way and that as you try to fathom exactly what it is that something’s reminding you of. You wouldn’t put it past Kane to slip in a surrogate sporran as a wink to his Scottishness, after all. So it might be sporran-y, but it also might just be a startlingly original visual placement of a decoration with no particular reason behind it.
And truthfully, that is the tantalizing essence of Kane: the seesawing between chic and suggestiveness that goes on in his clothes. “Ha!” he laughed. “We always do sex differently here.” There’s even quite a lot of it going on in the white shirt, which has frontal slits edged with ruffles, when you think of it. And that’s the thing—Kane does enjoy catching you out, thinking of it.
He named this particular collection “Technosexual,” and shot it in a metallic tunnel of love—well, actually an aircraft hangar in Suffolk. Since Spring 2018, when Kane made his collection about the suburban bordello run by Cynthia Payne, the apparently infinite variables of fetishism have become a fascination running through the seasons. This time, it’s “people who have sex with robots” and—rather bogglingly—with hand-tools. “You can look it all up on the internet,” he offered, cheerfully.
Some of this comes out in slogan sweatshirts, and a lot is channeled into the Kane logo sub-brand product (pajamas, baseball caps, mugs, sleep masks) that is stamped with the words More Joy, Sex, and Special and is all over Instagram.
But otherwise: The aircraft hangar is the backdrop for a capsule of Kane’s holiday party dresses. This is a see-now-buy-now collection, with all its familiar-yet-different Kane signatures. More of the variations on sparkle, which moves to epaulettes on sweaters and then an entire dress “like Liberace.” His pleated lamé skirts and dresses. And a particularly slinky black chainmail camisole dress, edged in chantilly lace. Lust and fashion really do walk hand in hand, sometimes.
