The piece was custom designed and developed by Hussein Chalayan and revisits one of the designer’s most memorable runway experiences. For his spring 2016 collection, two models stood still in white paper clothes with military accents before hidden shower heads suddenly released water above their heads. Their outer layers dissolved, exposing palm tree-patterned dresses beneath, punctuated with Swarovski crystals. Chalayan and his team spent about six months developing the water-reactive material.
For Chalayan, clothes have rarely been a static proposition. The Cyprus-born British designer has built his career around clothes that move, mutate, disappear and sometimes seem to defy their own material limits. His graduate collection from Central Saint Martins included clothing that had first been buried underground and left abandoned; then came dresses incorporating mechanical parts, lasers, LEDs and crystal “pollen,” as well as her now-iconic fall 2000 coffee table that transformed into a wooden skirt. The transformation was not a fashion show gimmick but a recurring cadence in the dialogue with design. His work finds a way to use technology, engineering and performance to ask what a garment might be capable of doing beyond simply clothing the body.
Gn entert
