Hussein Chalayan is so pretentious. That’s not meant pejoratively, even if the notion of pretension so often is. As Chalayan explained pre-show, this season’s Pre-Fall/Menswear/Womenswear triptych is a concerted campaign not only to reclaim but to also to embrace the concept. As he said: “This word pretentious can be a haunting word for anyone who is a creative. It’s so easily thrown at you. And it’s so condescending. But if you are a creative you have to pretend—you have to create imagined worlds all the time.”
Here Chalayan’s imagined milieus included ski (hence the hot-fluoro lips and gaiter-like cutaway pants); Anglo equestrian (the Wellington boots, the puppy-tooth, the overlaid tailoring); and fetish (strapping accessories, roomy black leather cagoules). This was a collection to take you from the slopes via the saddle to the sex club—versatile.
Chalayan is a truly masterful technician. There was lot of buttressing details in these pieces—inverted-V over-collars built into jackets; wide ribbons of fabric running in parallel to satin-finish pant legs; stiffened, protruding chest detailing on shirts; button-up sash-like flaps of extra material on knits—that created a bolstering effect linked to the theme of pre-tension. More prosaically the check double-faced cashmere jackets and meanderingly piped pants and cardigan-tops were highly want-able—whoever you plan to pretend to be.
