June 23, 2021 |
The pandemic has brought out the best in JW Anderson. He’s consistently found new, innovative and engaging ways to communicate his fashion vision, which have more than made up for the absence of regular catwalks. His latest offering, showing his men’s SS22 and women’s resort collections, is a collaboration with Jurgen Teller, whose pictures of the looks were sent to editors in a neat presentation box with cardboard pop-up frames akin to a set of classic school photographs.
The designer thought about dressing as an act of self-expression, either public or happening within the privacy of one’s own room. He talked of the “glorification of being who you are or what you want to be: the idea of the privacy of the individual”.
Shot in grungy British bedroom settings, Anderson was aiming for a sense of heightened normality and played with ideas of good and bad taste. Those wooden beaded car-seat covers were transformed into men’s tabard dresses, and fleece hoodies and trackie bottoms were plastered with a giant, kitsch strawberry motif. The playful mood continued with sporty nylon running shorts and logo knee socks, intermixed with the ‘J-Dubz’ anchor motif drawn in a freehand graphic, on fuzzy mohair vests and knits. The approach was similar for the women’s resort, with the addition of diagonal deckchair stripe dresses and a squishy fold-over leather bag that is a re-issue of the first bag Anderson designed for his label. It was good then, but is even better now, in its fresh new apple green colourway: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Photography courtesy of JW Anderson.
