Chalayan: Fashion narratives & creative dialogues

War. Exile. Alienation. Power. Nomadism. Cultural displacement. DNA sequences.

Could these be subjects for something as frivolous as fashion? For Hussein Chalayan, these are just some typical themes, which are always complex and often even subversive.

His 1993 thesis at Central St. Martin’s, after all, was “The Tangent Flows,” a collection of dresses he buried in the garden for three months, transforming them through oxidation. This seemingly simple, albeit strange, exercise was actually based on the duality of spirit and matter as researched from the works of Isaac Newton, René Descartes and Carl Gustav Jung.

Chalayan elucidates further: “It was about the life of a scientist trying to integrate Eastern philosophy into the Western Cartesian worldview, and the revolts she encountered in her journey. There is a dance, which takes place in the story where performers with interactive magnetized clothing (symbolizing the quest of the scientist) have iron fillings thrown at them in the form of a protest; they then get kidnapped, murdered and buried with their clothes intact. I then reenacted this action and buried clothes from this imaginary dance performance with iron fillings in them, which later I showed with segments of text from the story relating to what happened to the dancers as labels in the clothes.”

“Ambimorphous” (A/W 2002) explores the metamorphosis of forms, a recurring theme in Chalayan’s collections.

Sounds too tedious to result in anything beautiful or wearable? Well, this collection catapulted Chalayan into the fashion pantheon at that time, with consistently laudatory reviews and orders from boutiques like Browns, the London fashionphile’s ultimate source of what’s new and noteworthy. By 1995, Chalayan established his own fashion house, creating even more thought-provoking collections through an intricate creative process that results in very personal, complex narratives. He distinguished himself from other designers through his multidisciplinary approach, an inventive exploration of various mediums like sculpture, furniture design, video and special effects. He was always in touch with the zeitgeist, drawing inspiration directly from the political, economic and social realities of the times. 

With his “unique approach to design, he stands at the frontier of fashion, architecture and design,” says Pamela Golbin, curator of the exhibit “Fashion Narratives” at the Museé Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris. “His work is characterized by an intellectual rigor and a quest for technical perfection that often defies fashion stereotypes.” His collections through the years were actually expressions of his intellectual development. “They reveal his multicultural origins, his questioning the world, while his influences refer back to his personal history — his travels and upheavals and society’s problems, wars and conflicts. His creative process explores many fields such as anthropology, philosophy, architecture and science, intertwining them in a personalized and sometimes autobiographical account that serves as a unifying theme for his collections,” says Golbin.

The therapeutic surgical corset for the “crash” resulting from fast-paced living, from “Inertia” (S/S 2009)

Just like Chalayan’s mind, the exhibition is quite overwhelming. Aside from pieces from his collections, there are his multimedia installations and films commissioned by various art galleries, as well as fashion show videos, sketches, projections and other research materials shown side by side to illustrate the designer’s distinctive process.

Presented in a non-chronological format, the exhibit begins on the first floor with an exploration of the political, cultural, religious, geographic and technical boundaries on which his approach is based. Together with his groundbreaking buried dresses are the Airmail Dresses from his first commercial collection, Cartesia (autumn/winter 1994). Reminiscent of aerogrammes, these dresses have the same folds as the letters he sent as a child. Using synthetic Tyvek paper, the airmail dresses were inserted inside an envelope, ready to post.

“By sending the dress, it became a token of both the absence and the presence of the sender,” explained the designer.

A film and multimedia installation “I Am Sad Leyla” follows. It is composed of a life-sized sculpture of Turkish pop star Sertab Erener with an image of her moving face projected onto the life-cast, and a projection of the full orchestra performance with her singing a song of love and loss. With the music fading in the background, one approaches a tableau of mannequins rotating on discs like dolls in a jewelry box. The enchantment continues as one notices that the sculptural dresses are topiaries shaved from bales of tulle by this Edward Scissorhands of fashion. He named the collection “Before Minus Now,” a study of how invisible forces can construct form, exploring the powers of magnetism, expansion and erosion and how they can be applied to garments to create shape. In the fashion show, a ’50s feminine dress was inflated on stage where it unfolded and amplified in volume, while an Aeroplane Dress opened up, ready to take flight at the touch of a button.

A molded latex mini-dress hand-painted with images of crashed automobiles, from “Inertia” (S/S 2009).

Transformations and the metamorphosis of the body have always been recurring themes for Chalayan and he uses the latest technology to illustrate it in spectacular presentations that probably only Alexander McQueen could equal in the London fashion scene. In “Afterwords” (autumn/winter 2000), inspired by the war in Kosovo and the ethnic cleansing in Cyprus, which led to the mass exodus of people from their homes, an idyllic living room tableau with furniture pieces that totally disappear as models enter, strip the upholstery from the armchairs and wear them as dresses, fold the chairs into luggage and evacuate the scene.

“One Hundred and Eleven” (spring/summer 2007) was equally unforgettable with a series of hand-constructed mechanical dresses physically morphing from one era’s style to another. A high-neck, full-length Victorian gown from 1895 was amazingly transformed into a 1910 calf-length, loose-fitting style before it became a 1920s flapper dress. The designer even showed hairstyles transforming through different eras — on display was a wired mannequin with a wig that mechanically evolved as shown in an accompanying film.

An individual’s DNA sequences reacting to the environment are the basis for design in “Genometrics” (A/W 2005).

The second part of the exhibition on the second floor “emphasizes the notion of the body’s movement and displacement, as well as migration, speed and the interpretation of space and time,” says Golbin. It commences, fittingly enough, with a breathtaking installation of a mannequin suspended on the stretched straps of her little black dress from “Kinship Journeys” (autumn/winter 2003). In the fashion show video, the straps were actually suspended on balloons and the models were jumping on trampolines, “trying to reach the divine,” relates Chalayan. “The collection was a comment on the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and the meaning of hope, sin and salvation.” This part of the show represented the way we allow our sins and guilt to rule our lives: A model plants a seed within a drawer of a confessional that contains soil; the confessed sins would then manifest themselves as fruit or flowers. The final part evolved around a coffin boat, a comment on resisting death. For Chalayan, the balloons that suspended the dresses “were used as an artifice to elevate the model to the ‘Divine,’ for a deliverance that would not occur.”

If these dresses did not take off, what follows are collections devoted to growth and speed. “Geotropics,Æ a biological term that refers to the oriented growth of an organism with respect to the force of gravity, is a collection represented by a dress where the head and armrests of a chair are integrated into the garment, forming the silhouette and its wearer into a single and unique entity.

For the fashion show of Inertia (spring/summer 2009), there is a live smashing of dozens of glasses lined up in a bar as five models on a revolving podium are frozen in motion wearing molded latex mini-dresses hand-painted with images of crashed automobiles.

Ninjas unravel a Sakoku (S/S 2011) dress in broderie anglaise.

“The crash represents the result of fast-paced living and the ever-growing emergency,” according to Chalayan, “and a corset represents therapy. It is the idea that the pieces (of the body) are held together via these surgical corsets.”

To give the word “couture” a whole new meaning, Chalayan designed “Genometrics” (autumn/winter 2005), based on the biometric analysis of chromosomes. Using a specially designed program, the DNA sequence of an individual is observed as he reacts to the soundscape of the environment. The resulting animation is then used as the basis for designing the garment. Igloo hoods of shaved carpet weaves in coated cottons, jumbo corduroys and tapestry elements were used to give life to the sculptural shapes taken directly from the sound test experiments.

The most recent works featured in the exhibit are, not surprisingly, inspired by Japan, a country known for intellectual rigor in design just like Chalayan. “Sakoku” (spring/summer 2011) or “locked country” refers to Japan’s foreign policy of isolation, which until the mid-19th century banned almost all foreigners from entering the country and any Japanese national from leaving under penalty of death. The designer observed that “Japan is saturated with disembodied experiences in a de-centered space where event is born out of the choreography of ceremony and the simulation of thought.” Exploring how shadow, water, architecture, technology, theater, costume, poetry and isolation all affect Japanese culture, he presented an abstract take using wide panels of broderie anglaise to envelop the body like a gift waiting to be opened.

For “Earthbound” (A/W 2009), Chalayan used architecture, building processes and building materials to translate the urban London landscape into clothing.

For the next season, Chalayan followed with “Kaikoku” or “open country,” designating the period when Japan opened up to Western culture during the aftermath of World War II. Focusing on the resulting hybrid of cultures, the collection had a relaxed austerity: Round-shouldered tailored coats over double-breasted jackets; dresses and jackets matched with sharply tailored trousers contrasting Eastern graphics with Western structure. Quite subdued, one would think, for Chalayan. Until the piece de resistance comes into view: a Floating Dress in gold made of an automated radio-controlled polyester resin and fiberglass capsule. On its lacquered surface are precious crystals resting and waiting for the wearer to release them, at just the right moment, to float in the air and create magic for everyone around her. “They symbolize the pollination of ideas,” says Chalayan. They could very well be those that he bestows upon us each time he presents one of his enchanting and thought-provoking collections.

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“Hussein Chalayan: Fashion Narratives” runs until Nov. 13 at the Museé Les Arts Décoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli, Paris (beside the Louvre).