Hussein Chalayan SS09: Inertia23 Images
Welcome to the Archive Pull, a series delving into the 30-year history of our print magazine. Here, we look back at an interview with Hussein Chalayan ahead of his first major British exhibition at the Design Museum, originally published in the February 2009 issue of Dazed & Confused.
Hussein Chalayan is the pied piper of British tailoring – continuously leading us into unexplored fashion territory by exploiting radical new technologies. In Chalayan’s world, wooden tables collapse telescopically into skirts, morphing outfits propel the wearer through decades of fashion trends, and paper dresses fold up to fit inside an airmail envelope. These are not gimmicks, however, but carefully considered examples of fashion reassessed as architecture, history and communication.
A Turkish Cypriot, Chalayan spent his formative years travelling between his father in London and his mother in Cyprus. He attended Highgate boarding school from the age of 12, before sailing through Central Saint Martins alongside Alexander McQueen, where his 1993 graduate collection The Tangent Flows (silk garments buried in his garden, dug up in time for their decomposed catwalk debut, and swiftly bought by designer store Browns) is still talked about today. So, how do we categorise this man? Forward-thinking, yes, but he bemoans the tags “experimental” and “conceptual” as “terrible words that can overtake your other work”. Twice named British Designer of the Year, he took over as Puma’s creative director in 2008, which should silence the last of those who ever doubted his designs’ wearability, and he now shows in Paris, but refuses to relocate his studio from London’s east end. This city, the one that awarded him his MBE, is where Chalayan feels most at home.
Hussein Chalayan’s dresses are as comfortable clinging to the body as they are on display at the Tate Modern, and the designer regularly experiments in art and film. The first major exhibition of his work in the UK, at the Design Museum, includes a humbling assortment of career highlights from the past 15 years – Afterwords, his portable furniture that transforms into wearable pieces; Airborne, celebrating his breathtaking “video dress”, as he calls it, the surface of which dazzles with 15,000 LED lights; Before Minus Now, a remote-control dress made using the same materials you would find in aircraft construction; and Readings, where Chalayan uses lasers to refract light through pieces covered in Swarovski crystals. Among the films and high-tech forms, only one thing remains unanswered – how can a past like this belong to someone whose future we still can’t wait to see?
Dazed & Confused: What’s the idea behind your Inertia collection, which we’re shooting today?
Hussein Chalayan: The whole thing is based on speed, and ‘crash’ as a result of speed. It’s to do with the speeding up of the economy, the speeding up of how we move around; and then it is about the consequential crash. What I wanted to capture in the collection was a sense of speed also being contradicted by slow growth, so it’s an amalgamation of images of crashes and these organic things that grow on the body. The final pieces that we are shooting today are based on the idea of cause and effect in one, the speed and the crash in one dress.
How do you think fashion is going to change as a result of financial recession?
Hussein Chalayan: People will be more selective in how they spend their money. I think in some ways, it will help us edit our thoughts, or edit how we live. Sometimes situations like this help you become more creative, more selective. I think it will help people understand what they like and what they don’t like.
Are you excited about your Design Museum exhibition?
Hussein Chalayan: I am, because it’s my first exhibition on this level in England. Most people from England always do better outside of England. This country gives you a real initial start, but it leaves you kind of out at sea, and you can drown.
You went through financial difficulties here. Was it frustrating to be winning all these awards and yet struggling to get sponsorship?
Hussein Chalayan: Yes, we went through a lot of rough patches. We have always been a small company, and had to be very careful with money. I have to be careful even now, with this PPR and Puma partnership, but the situation is obviously better than before. When people heard that I put my business into liquidation, I think they perceived it as a bankruptcy, and actually it wasn’t a bankruptcy. I wanted to separate with my partners at that time and we mutually agreed it.
I haven’t set out to be an outsider. I think that because I’m seen as conceptual, I’m seen as intense – which is bullshit
– Hussein Chalayan
How did your work with Puma come about?
Hussein Chalayan: Puma called me and I thought they were going to offer to collaborate. But instead they said, ‘Actually we want to invest in the Hussein Chalayan brand. And we also want you to be our creative director.’ So, because I knew they worked with Gucci, I thought, ‘Okay, if I can access PPR and Gucci facilities then it becomes a more interesting partnership.’
Do you feel quite separate from your contemporaries?
Hussein Chalayan: I haven’t set out to be an outsider. I think that because I’m seen as kind of conceptual, I’m seen as intense and whatever – which is all bullshit. I think they isolate me in a way. Like, you know, you see a fellow designer, and one minute they are all very friendly, coming to give you a kiss. Then the next minute they see you in another context, and they pretend to not see you. I’m like, ‘What is this about?’
Do you send political messages down the catwalk?
Hussein Chalayan: I have done, but they become socio-political because I think the body has a big role to play in terms of belief. I did a show in 1997 about how we define our territory through, let’s say, the chador (veil). With the naked models wearing nothing but their headdresses… That was a really important show for me. I was about to die because I was so nervous. They are explorations, my work. At the same time, they are sort of like proposals of how you could look at something. So they are not really like statements, they are more like, ‘Okay, you can look at this in that way.’ Because they are never really straightforward, they always have a sort of abstract element.
On that abstract theme, how important have films become to your work?
Hussein Chalayan: I think films are really important – they are a good medium for representing a whole environment. It becomes so monumental that I can base a collection on a film, and I can base a film on a collection. They set each other off. From the beginning, my work was always meant to be cross-disciplinary.
Do you see your moving clothes as prototypes of future fashion?
Hussein Chalayan: Absolutely.
So, where do you think fashion will go?
Hussein Chalayan: Technology will have a big impact on clothing. I think technology is the only way in which you could really do new things. When you say technology, people always think it’s futuristic. It’s not. It’s about enhancing function, answering needs. And so it doesn’t have to be about mechanical parts, it can be about how you use nature.
What does it feel like to see your dresses not simply on models, but in exhibitions?
Hussein Chalayan: Well, there is this duality to my work. I think it’s fantastic, because one minute you can see what I’m doing in a museum, and then you can go and buy something wearable that is related to that monument that you have just seen. That connection, for me, is really exciting.
In 2005, you were the representative for Turkey at the Venice Biennale. What did you do for that?
Hussein Chalayan: Turkey is technically not my country, but we speak the same language, we identify with Turkey. It’s similar to Sicily and Italy if you like, but we have our own government. It was a really interesting project – I made a film with Tilda Swinton about DNA, about this sort of quest. It was a five-screen film, with the sculptures I made shown within the film, as well as alongside the film.
Could you give some examples of your visual sources?
Hussein Chalayan: I don’t actually have sources as such, because it’s always about the idea. But I was growing up in the 80s, so I loved Jean-Paul Goude at the time. I listened to Siouxsie Sioux and PiL (Public Image Ltd). They don’t necessarily inspire you visually. I also loved Kate Bush, Patti Smith and PJ Harvey, who came later…
Are they the kind of women you like to dress?
Hussein Chalayan: Definitely. I think that part of the reason why I think I did fashion was because of my fascination with anything around the body. I think it was to do with empowering women as well. I’ve always, always liked the girl who dresses like a boy during the day, but who can be a bitch at night.
I think that part of the reason why I did fashion was because of my fascination with anything around the body
– Hussein Chalayan
How do you unwind?
Hussein Chalayan: Oh god, I’m quite normal really – friends, family. If you’re from the part of the world I’m from, you’re going to be a foodie. I love a good conversation. I like going to concerts. I’m very standard, in a way.
What do your parents do?
Hussein Chalayan: My mother works in a university bookstore in Cyprus. My dad used to have a restaurant for many years, and now he runs a bed-and-breakfast.
If time, space and materials were no object, what would you like to design?
Hussein Chalayan: I would love to design a car one day.
And how would that turn out?
Hussein Chalayan: I actually don’t know… I think I like the idea of designing something a little more indelible. I’m not a product designer, though – I have ideas for things. I have already incorporated a lot of alien stuff into fashion that I dreamed of in the past. So I think I’ve done okay in terms of approaching different levels, different things that you wouldn’t associate with clothes. What I would be really excited about would be to have my own store, where I could have my own world. I think that would be a really exciting moment.
Are you thinking about it?
Hussein Chalayan: Yeah, it’s part of our plans.
One more thing – are you in love at the moment?
Hussein Chalayan: Yes, but I won’t say more. Yes, I am.
Scroll through the gallery at the top of the page for Chalayan’s SS09 Inertia collection
Hair RAPHAEL SALLEY at STREETERS, make-up SHARON DOWSET at CLM, model SIGRID at ELITE, photographic assistants IVAN RUBERTO, RUGGIERO, styling assistant LOUISE HALL-STRUTT, set design assistants ANNA SBIERA-PALEOLOGUE, RHEA THIERSTEIN, make-up assistant JENNA JEFFRIES CAFAGNA, processing THE ARTFUL DODGERS, retouching DAVE ANDREWS, special thanks to SPRING LIGHTING
