Many thanks for pictures and info:-)
Here an article from iht.com:-)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/18/style/fhuss.html
Here an article from iht.com:-)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/18/style/fhuss.html
Hussein Chalayan: Cultural dialogues New Feature
By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
GRONINGEN, Netherlands Can a fashion designer make a stitch of difference to the wider world? The Groninger Museum - a multicolored, post-modern edifice in the northern Netherlands - believes so.
This is what Kees van Twist, the museum's director, said last weekend as he opened an exhibition of the Turkish/Cypriot designer Hussein Chalayan's first 10 years.
"This pioneering designer unites cultures and opens dialogues between them - without hinting, as our politicians often do, that one is superior to the other," he said. "We can learn from him."
In the context of troubled multiethnic relations in the Netherlands, "Hussein Chalayan" (until Sept. 4), with its exploration of the chador, Turkish costume and of the female body, takes on a particular resonance.
And in a spring season when fashion exhibitions are sprouting like tulips - Yohji Yamamoto in Paris last week or Chanel in New York next month - other museums could learn from Groninger's didactic yet dramatic approach.
"We have a mission statement," says van Twist. "We want to trigger people. They can be angry or happy, but they must not leave unmoved."
Chalayan, 34, may be controversial, but he is not confrontational. The cerebral designer's style is modernist, free from past reference. He is fascinated by the dynamics of flight and mixes complex, linear cuts with an appreciation of organic female forms.
By exploring the thought processes of the designer and by showing his work in other disciplines such as video art and photographic imagery, the Groninger Museum has set a blueprint for fashion exhibitions that too often look like samples from a fashion showroom.
"It can not only be about beauty - there has to be more behind; we are trying to tell a story," says van Twist, who sees the same connection between Chalayan's work and what is going on in society as in previous exhibitions devoted to Viktor & Rolf's clothes or Jake and Dinos Chapman's art.
The Chalayan exhibit is spare, rigorous, filling soaring spaces, as the models water olive trees, stare with soulful faces out at the busy Dutch canal or have arms raised as if cleaning their glass display cases, while their dresses seem to spill innards from the stomach area. Those disturbing clothes were from the spring/summer 2003 show "Manifest Destiny," inspired by the idea of America imposing its western ideology. Other perplexing titles have included in 2000 "Before Minus Now," focusing on mankind, technology and nature; and "Between" (1998) which ended with models, from naked to totally covered, all wearing chadors.
Many inspirations have come from Chalayan's Cyprus childhood living on the "fault line between the Muslim and Christian worlds."
"I was shocked when I was described as a 'Muslim designer' - yet I think it is wonderful that there is a fashion designer called 'Hussein,"' says Chalayan, emphasizing the duality of work grown from his Turkish (but non-religious) roots and his training at Central Saint Martins School in London, where he lives. He says that he owes his education and development to England and to "Anglo-Saxon tolerance where anyone has a chance."
The "Place to Passage" (2004) video offers a harmonious vision of opposing cultures. An aerodynamic pod, seen in all its streamlined beauty in the previous room, takes off from a London car park. It then crosses a lunar landscape, its graceful female passenger served a robotic tray of food or gently bathed in water, until the pod skims up the Bosphorus toward the mosque-filled skyline of Istanbul.
That city has become Chalayan's frequent destination since his work (although the clothes are made in Italy), has been sponsored by Turquality - an organization promoting Turkish brands and using Chalayan to raise awareness of the region. The designer also teaches at an art school in Istanbul, just as he participated in a weekend seminar at Groningen's Minerva art academy.
The exhibition, curated by Sue-an van der Zijpp, with Mark Wilson as metteur-en-scène, is over two floors. The first level emphasizes the aerodynamic outfits - what Chalayan calls "monumental" pieces that become lode stars for the more accessible parts of the collection. These include an "aeroplane" dress, with plates opening electronically to reveal a part of the body; a built in neck rest; or a chair integrated with the garment.
The display of a modernist wooden coffee table and chairs heralds one of Chalayan's most dramatic collections "Afterwords" (autumn/winter 2000/2001). As the slipcovers become dresses, the chairs themselves are folded into attaché cases and the table morphs into a skirt.
This technical wizardry was designed to express refugees in flight, camouflaging their possessions. The collection was inspired by events in Kosovo and by Chalayan's childhood memories. Other ideas are even more dense and intense - such as an apparently simple collection of summer clothes in fabric patterned with historic and current images of Cyprus. In fact, Chalayan had started the collection by testing his own DNA to verify his family roots and tree.
"I am not a big fashion person - I see Hussein very much as an artist," says van der Zijpp. "I find striking that his many interests are executed on video, garments and a series of photos. He is very articulate."
The curator says "we have talked and talked," describing the three-year process from van Twist meeting Chalayan at the White Cube art gallery in London through tea at the Louvre with Chalayan's ever-present mother and aunt.
For a decadelong body of work there are perhaps too few clothes, although dresses made from balls of tulle, snipped like topiary, give a glimpse of an organic side that offsets the rigid, technical pieces.
"It is editing," says van der Zijpp. "Cutting is difficult in a first show. You have to kill your darlings."
Some shows are expressed in photos, such as the 2003 "Ambimorphous," when patches of ethnic Turkish embroidery appeared and faded on a series of black dresses.
Chalayan says that what is displayed at Groninger is also a response to the space itself. So a moth wing of a dress from the 1994 graduation show, buried in the ground with iron filings to create an organic destroyed effect, is at the top of curving stairs; while a soaring loft is home to the Nicosia garden that is a key element in Chalayan's first free-standing store in Tokyo.
"I work with the space all the time," says Wilson, who has been at Groninger for 10 years. "It should be serious fun - a sense of who Hussein is and what he does, but also an enjoyable experience."
A visitor might be entertained - yet wonder how these conceptual clothes ever make it into a woman's wardrobe. There are few of the wearable versions of the monumental pieces and none of the best-selling secondary line. But van Twist is adamant that the exhibition required only the cutting-edge elements.
"In the long term, a museum has to make these kind of choices," he says. "We are not a shop."
(but then, I'm something of a Chalayan sycophant - most rational humans probably won't have the same problem)
). 
Presumably they've finished it by now, but man, what a drag...
The tears were still pretty unexpected though, because I'd seen the video of that show before, and the photos more time than I can count. That's why I said that it was a result of the atmosphere; it was like all those layers of meaning built up inside until - waterworks.
...
