For the love of Chalayan

I love fashion. I love looking at fashion. I love considering what exactly ‘fashion’ is and I love even more learning about those who attempt to define it and create it. So when I heard that ‘From Fashion and Back’, the Hussein Chalayan retrospective currently showing in the Design Museum, promised to explore the extraordinary designer's work, naturally I got very excited.

Few designers have pushed the boundaries between fashion and art like Hussein Chalayan. His pioneering work is motivated by ideas not readily associated with fashion: architecture, philosophy, science and technology, cultural displacement and identity, genetics, anthropology and aerodynamics all inform and influence his work.
From invoking elements of architecture to installing lasers in dresses, no material is off limits to the Cypriot, who, in addition to helming his own label, is also the creative director of Puma.
Chalayan in particular has made his reputation by invigorating fashion with dazzling performance. His acclaimed runway shows function as performance pieces which allow him to express important concepts. It was part of his “After Words” collection in 2000, in which models donned chairs and tables, a nod, Chalayan says, to the plight of refugees who flee their homes during war, as happened to his own family before the partition of Cyprus in 1974. Then there was his “Readings” collection last summer, also exhibited in the Design Museum, in which the clothes used motorised lasers and crystals to dazzle the audience with artificial rays of sunshine. A comment on celebrity worship, if you’re interested.
His Spring/Summer 2009 show was equally emotionally and politically pertinent. The collection titled “Inertia” literally ended with a crash: the live smashing of dozens of wine glasses lined up along a pseudo-bar inset in the back of the set. While that happened, the stage was occupied by a circle of girls standing on a revolving platform, wearing molded-latex dresses that appeared to be frozen in motion. Each dress was hand-painted with images of crushed cars.

"It's about the speed in our lives and how it can only result in a crash," Chalayan explained, adding that the prints, which included number plates, car handles, and fenders, were "taken from pictures of car graves."

Some say that it is fashion's responsibility (if it's to remain at all relevant) to register events in the world at large. But it takes an incredible designer to probe the live anxieties of this scary moment and yet still come up with a wearable fashion collection. After seeing such a comprehensive, thought-provoking, inspiring and beautiful exhibition as this, it is clear to me at least, that person is Hussein Chalayan.