September 22, 2015 |
Christopher Kane and car crash are not words you often hear in a sentence together. Until now. And obviously this was not because the collection was bad – far from it. Instead, as he developed his spring collection, shown yesterday, he found a car crash to be a recurring metaphor. “Crash and repair,” he called it in the notes presented before the show. So how did this find its way into the clothing? Well, there was a vivid, electric colour palette. Jagged shapes, cut-out and stitched back together. Even more literally, clothing was splattered with oil or car body paint. ‘Kapow’ shaped bags. And the repair? Well – past motifs were refigured in new ways, pieced into new shapes – acid lace was spliced into jackets and dresses (just don’t call it neon) whilst an oversized perspex pocket reminded of his iconic aqua bags. But there were new ideas at play here too – like the unraveling tassels in fading colours or the cable ties that adorned the model’s wrists. The result was a collection that had the energy of a car crash – explosive, electrifying – the remains built back up into something even more impressive – something new.
Photographs by Jason lloyd-Evans
