This morning, if you were to follow Jonathan Anderson’s personal Instagram account, you would have seen that he posted an image of a man lying face down on a bed, arse out, framed upon the backdrop of a crochet blanket. Which suggested that this collection, his AW17 offering, promised to be either about nude men or the art of crochet. Unsurprisingly, as presumably one needs at least some items of clothing for a fashion show, it was the latter. But banish anything thoughts of crochet as your grandma’s old blanket, for here it was shown to be something you could wear quite happily around your neck, on your sleeves, on your bag, your shoes, or pretty much anywhere else on your body. These boys, were, quite literally covered in the stuff. And this was sort of an ode to the craft of knitwear in general – mega-sized cable-knit jumpers inset with liturgical details, extra-extra long scarfs that trailed on the floor after the models or the tassels that hung from sleeves or hemlines. All in a kaleidoscopic palette of colours – rich sunset orange, pinks and yellows or deep lilac and blue, transporting us, perhaps, to winters on the med rather than freezing english ones. And, as a side note, this was perhaps the best use of crotchet since Katya’s “ugly” dress in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7 (if you know, you know). Though obviously this was in no way ugly. It was beautiful. It was JDubz. Crochet, you stay.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
