Fashion democratisation is in full strides if Hussein Chalayn's SS08 collection is anything to go by. Instead of showing a traditional catwalk show, he chose to partner up with SHOWstudio to shoot a film presenting his collection 'Readings'. It's said that there was some resistance from the fash crowd (not surprising...) but watching this film and hearing his interview about the collection, I think there more than sufficient detail to fully 'get' the collection. Based around sun-worshipping, it features quite classic jumpsuit, shirt and trench dress ensembles with the sort of cutting twists you'd expect from Chalayan. The complexity does build up throughout the collection with colour blocking and some prints incorporated. I'm sort of glad Chalayan has done a collection that is pretty deceptive and I'm certainly glad there is all this SHOWstudio material to accompany it because as i keep saying, taking things on face value is often a mistake with a lot of collections. The final pieces with the LED's and lasers beaming out are nothing short of breathtaking...
There may have been some staunch fash-crowd poo-pooing the idea of showing this film simultaneously to the public and to the people at the viewing last night in Paris but it makes a blogger like myself realise that steps are being taken by some parts of the fashion industry to connect fashion lovers/amateurs and professionals/insiders and to knock that wall down between the two (well not knock it down completely...just a little....).
