Turkish designer Hussein Chalayan returns to LFWM following his brand Chalayan’s 25 anniversary earlier this year.
This season the Innovative brand presents America and Japan inspired Menswear Spring / Summer collection ‘post-colonial body’ focusing on America and Japan as the two main points of inspiration, as the collection fuses dance and movement from South American dance genres and Japanese ritual enactments celebrating seasonal rites of fertility and abundance. Part imaginary, part a study, the cloths are conceived in a spirit of enforced joy and a protest at the same time.
Moving bodies are mimicked in draped designs but the pieces remain true to the designers’ usual wearable and practical style. The sartorial wool tailoring is punctuated by graphic rope compositions stemming from exercises in physical discipline come in navy subtle stripes and grey and black checks. Classic cotton stripes are mixed in crisp shirting with inserted panelling. Multicoloured stripes in jerseys have a celebratory summer feel, visible at times hidden under layers.
Summer cotton tailoring comes in 3 different stripes with a charming woven texture. The House Chalayan blue and white stripe ‘happiness code ‘ comes in cotton weave specially developed in Japan, seen this time as outerwear and separates.
Light linen mixes in burnt orange, sand and navy come in pieces which have an institutional feel, where the shapes triggered by dancing bodies lead to subtle graphic punctuations. Outerwear inspired by movement to an extent where air can be trapped into the clothes, come in paper cotton in navy and mushroom.
coupling up to ‘please’ the white colonisers so to speak. A heat struck straw print acts as a semiotic base, sending us to South America and Japan at the same time, in navy, mushroom, burnt orange, sand, red lime, pale blue and yellow.
Models walked out to the runway carrying handheld stereos, while the audio experience was of electronic music and a series of chants – referring back to this year’s theme.
*Images courtesy of SPRING London*