I like to think that, just like Dolly Parton, when she wondered back through the years to the seasons of her youth, recalling how her mother took a box of rags and made young Dolly a coat of many colours, so Kim Jones, when he came upon a box of Dutch etchings of animal adaptations while on his usual inspiration trip, this time to South Africa, thought to himself, “How to put these beasts to use?” For there were beasts of every size and every beast was fierce, and isn’t “fierce” what all the kids want these days? Probably not – by the time we’ve caught up they’ve usually moved on to something else, such as fleek, but then, can beasts be fleek? So anyway, he did what any sensible person would do and had the Chapman Brothers adapt them. Well, there was a spirit of punk permeating through the SS17 collection, and what could be more punk than having grotesquerie by the brothers Chapman strewn across see-through macs and masculine clutches? After all, if they can do it with some Goya etchings, they can certainly do it with Dutch animal etchings. Think of this as a menagerie in textile form: precious, yet not quite as precious as a menagerie made from glass. These won’t break if you drop them. If you’re looking for a fantastic beast and want to know where to find one, look no further than here.
Taken from Issue 45 of 10 Men, FLUID UNIQUE BRAVE, on newsstands now…