Toying with the concepts of dystopia and the ruinous impacts of the modern world, Gareth Wrighton’s debut collection with Fashion East uses detailed graphic knitwear to present how Mother nature is fighting back.
His AW19 collection, presented at London Fashion Week, marries traditional techniques including: latch hook rug making and hand sewn embellishments with print- on-demand pieces, further exploring today’s meaning of ‘craft’ and ‘handmade.’ Silhouettes are reminiscent of the humble clothing of the 30s dust bowl–a plague-like series of dust storms that swept across America and Canada but are modernised through the bulletproof Kevlar fabric lining, re-appropriated dog leashes and karate belt-come-police-tape details.
Wrighton dubs his work “a touch of hand in the digital age” confronting how man exists both in the tangible world and online. Through this approach, he questions the presence of authorship in both internet culture and American folk objects, imagining what would be in museums to represent our current time.
Whether its a knitted realisation of Chelsea Manning’s Wiki-leaked footage or a mohair cardigan featuring the haunting neon strips of the Century 16 cinema in Aurora, Colorado (where twelve were shot in 2012) Wrighton’s pieces become artefacts of the unstable world that we live in. Each have a troubled past that confirm our troubled future.
