“I know this is not the most commercially viable collection. I kind of don’t care,” declared Edward Crutchley post-show. He added: “It’s what I want to do. And I do my best work when I do what I want.” Shortly before, Crutchley had taken his bow from the mezzanine balcony of Ironmongers’s Hall, cheerily flipping his audience the bird with both hands as he did so.
Exactly 10 years after his first show was thrown in this very venue, Crutchley has built up a portfolio of work for grand luxury houses—“I have other things in my diary too,” as he put it—that he is in the position to develop his own line as a passion project. The result is a label in which Crutchley is truly free to follow his personal inclination for historical textiles, extreme silhouettes and a healthy dose of libido.
Be-hatted in Stetson-esque Stephen Jones designs, his models wore NFL-shaming, super-wide shoulder pads (“as wide as we could go”) from which hung regally lush fabrics based on a pan-cultural spectrum spanning Borneo, Byzantium, Egypt, Morocco, Turkmenistan, England and beyond. That cowboy aside notwithstanding, the bold-shouldered volume of these super-sized, pimped-up historical tapestry coats recalled the magnificent portly vastness of Henry VIII: Perhaps it was just the Tudoresque architecture of the gilded hall around us that conjured that impression.
Almost as elaborate as the hall was a mermaid dress in hand-crochet laser cut latex segments: This looked ceremonially kinky in front of its stained glass backdrop. A startled Dionysus gawped forth from bacchanalian bouncer bomber jackets. A medievally-strapped hose and jerkin were fashioned by Crutchley collaborator Oliver Haus in more black latex: The result was one for the Dark Ages. Further crocheting was crafted by Shannon-Jaide Hyland in Lurex-edged dresses. Backstage, my elevator pitch for this collection was: “Doctor Who travels across time and space collecting fabrics and inspiration before returning to London with a bunch of hard-partying companions for a serious session at the seminal 1990s night, Kinky Gerlinky.” This time, Crutchley gave the thumbs up.
