Hussein Chalayan F/W 02 Paris

I ended up watching this show on TV the other day by mere accident and remembered how beautiful, powerful and admittedly confusing it was for me when I first saw it and how relevant it still is today, almost 10 years after it was presented. I thought it be a good idea to start a thread both for discussion and for those who are interested in his earlier work.

Set it to full screen and enjoy.
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style.com review (vague but it has some good information on the show).

 

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you're welcome, Scott!

How I wish I could own any of the pieces in this collection. They look sublime, especially in motion.

I always loved his journeys through time in his shows, I actually think time must be one of the great torments (for lack of a better word right now) for any creator of clothes IN the allegedly 'ever changing' business of fashion and I admire how he'd face it in his past collections and challenge his audience through presentations that can feel quite crude in an event [fashion week] that craves and celebrates a transition.. that's often not real.
Hope that makes some sense!.

 

Hmm.. I guess Ghesquiere's work may resemble Chalayan's but what they do is completely different, Chalayan prior to this collection and a few seasons onwards experimented a lot with deconstruction, this collection seems a perfect example of that time.. of what happens when you mentally, culturally and physically rip apart a traditional costume, a uniform that allegedly identifies you, what remains of it and how you find your way back to it, in case you really ever left it in the past (at least that's a bit of my interpretation).
Ghesquiere at the very same time had been playing with appliqué, patchwork.. all in the most literal sense, it wasn't conceptual, it was pure exploration of a technique, his S/S 02 'Patchwork' collection (right before this one by Chalayan) is a perfect example:


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I see the obvious ethnic + patchwork-in-appearance similarities, but they're both going in very different directions, they're all part of a different journey as designers.. and let's not forget 2002 was a very inviting year for more bohemian, ethnic tendencies.. which Ghesquiere naturally took part of.. they crossed roads but I don't think one necessarily influenced the other.. not even 5 or 8 years later.. but who knows, anyway, Ghesquiere in his last years has been taking a strange amount of 'ideas' from more independent designers.. sometimes blatantly so.