The Christopher Shannon collection you didn t see this afternoon had something or other to do with Mexico. "But I ve never been to Mexico," Shannon said just before the show today, "and it s nothing to me." So he scrapped it and looked to an inspiration more personal: the club landscape of the north of England during the late nineties, when he began escaping teenage drudgery through parties. "As soon as I discovered clubs, I didn t go to school anymore," he said.
Channeling the wild excess of party culture, and the defiantly unnatural clothing that was its unofficial costume, was a way back to an earlier era for Shannon. "I got into Central Saint Martins and got very serious and forgot that I d ever been ridiculous," he said. Returning to his clubbing days in a spirit of glittery-haired celebration, he added, "felt very personal to me."
Shannon s shows are personal. He styles them himself; he casts them himself. He expresses surprise that any designer wouldn t do it that way. It s a risky proposition, but his instincts are good. His clothes are genuinely salable; even the new materials his club inspiration licensed, like PVC, rubber, and vinyl, didn t lead him too far afield from the realms of the wearable. While many around him whirl into oddity (and its frequent attendant, obscurity), Shannon s feet stay on the ground. But as he proved here, that doesn t mean they can t move to the beat.
