Hussein Chalayan

One of the most innovative and experimental fashion designers, Hussein Chalayan, is to show outfits, installations, photographic images and video pieces at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsurg, in Germany. I first got to know him for his “normal” collections. Then I learned that:

For his graduation collection at St Martins in 1993, Chalayan buried the silk clothes in the earth to see how they would decompose.

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His autumn/winter show in 2000 featured models in sugar glass clothes who undressed each other by smashing the outfits with hammers. Other shows have revealed a social conscience absent elsewhere in the fashion industry: naked models wearing dresses based on the traditional Islamic chador, as a comment on the treatment of women in Muslim societies.

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Other pieces display technical virtuosity, such as his paper Airmail dress (picture), which arrives as a letter and folds out to become a full-length frock and the Aeroplane dress, a white fiberglass remote control dress with flaps that rise like aeroplane wings before take-off.

But it was his Living Room collection (more pictures), in spring 2000, that sealed his reputation. A range of tables and chairs transformed into clothing (slipcovers became dresses, chairs were folded into attaché case and a round table became a skirt). The models serenely picked up the furniture, put them on and walked off.

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“The project had nothing to do with furniture,” he says. “It was all about the moment of trying to leave your home at a time of war. The living room was supposed to be like somebody’s wardrobe. How you could hide your possessions and carry them with you? Partly it’s from my background – I’m from Cyprus, which is a divided place – and partly because of Kosovo.”

Chalayan solo exhibition runs 15 October 2005 – 5 February 2006 at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsurg, in Germany.

Via designboom.
Interview of Chalayan in Icon.
Images.