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Commanding views right across the British capital, Christopher Kane showed his collection at the Sky Garden in the City of London this afternoon. ‘Crash and repair, that’s what we kept saying to each other. With everything that’s happened to us over the last few months the car crash became the metaphor,’ the designer stated.
In May last year, Christopher lost his teacher, mentor and friend, Louise Wilson – he dedicated his last collection to her. Only days before her memorial six months ago now, his mother died. It’s safe to say that this is what he was referring to – his work has always been autobiographical, after all, and he and his business and creative collaborator sister, Tammy, have certainly been through a tumultuous time.
Perhaps that explained both the almost obsessively retrospective feel of at least some of the work and the hard-edged, belle-laide aesthetic offered up throughout. Here was the neon silk lace with which the designer made his name, cut into boxy shirts, knife pleated skirts and coats, all of which dazzled, there was the roomy black tailoring with lozenges cut away at the knee or elbow, say. It was determinedly masculine in flavour and looked great for that. Aluminum organza dresses came with stitched, scalloped edges. Leather was printed with scaled up ‘bacterial blobs’ in more bright shades. Signature knits were decorated this time not with flowers but with tangled hand embroidery. PVC plastic pockets and bags were applied to everything from more lace to heavy black crepe to studiously jarring effect.
There was a play here – as there always has been – between the haute and the humble, the real and the fake. Snakeskin was deliberately confused and combined with jelly plastics in clothing and accessories, machine work was juxtaposed with delicate handcraftsmanship. The effect was cleverly disorienting and quite unlike anything that has been seen on any other catwalk this season. And that, perhaps, is the point. The secret of a great designer is that his work is both instantly recognisable and innovative, idiosyncratic and desirable in equal parts. There was nothing even remotely approaching the banal in this collection either and that, too, is a precious commodity.
‘There is this idea of creating something out of destruction… Something childlike and honest in its creation,’ Christopher Kane said.
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