Leading the way in hi-tech fashion design, Hussein Chalayan is renowned for his innovative and conceptual approach to structure and process. Reinterpreting conventional fashions he made “wearable, portable architecture” for his A/W00 collection After Words, and, for his S/S08 Readings collection, a dress featuring over 200 moving lasers that spectacularly refract light through Swarovksi crystals.
In the A/W05 issue of AnOther, Chalayan explained that it’s all about the end product, not the mechanics.
“I suppose I start with political and emotive issues, and then intellectualise them in my own way and turn them into visual things. I hate the idea of being labelled ‘cerebral.’ At the end of the day I’m really interested in form and shape and the body and cut. People don’t buy a dress because they like the inspiration behind it, they buy it because it looks good on them, they like the way it makes them feel. The inspiration is only there to trigger the process.”
Hussein Chalayan’s upcoming exhibition B-SIDE opens on September 17 at Spring Projects