When I was still at Dazed, a curious triangular cardboard arrived lying by the filing cabinets and nestled inside, in amongst a mass of shredded tissue paper, was a resin-cast ultra-realistic replica of a dead chicken. Here's photographic proof of this artefact. Later that week, some cardboard penguins courtesy of the Dover Street Market x Peter Jensen window display also arrived and chicken and penguins were getting chummy by the rusty filing cabinets. That chicken was the emblem of designer Omer Asim's S/S 10 debut collection, a realistic and somewhat ridiculous object representative of death. I've been in touch with this Sudanese designer for a while, exchanging lookbooks, emails and not-well-timed emails. Asim studied architecture at The Bartlett and then went into the United Nations Development Program. He then made a turn for fashion and worked under Vivienne Westwood as well as in the costuming effort for the Harry Potter saga.
Architecture. Global outlook. Wizardry. Those three things are certainly evident in his debut S/S 10 collection above. Themes aside (the collection was inspired by Kevin Carter's The Vulture and the Baby), the thing that is most apparent is Asim's intuition with creating defined lines within a garment that dictate the ensuing volumes and overall silhouette. The chicken also turns up as a literal pale pinkish print that from afar could be anything from blushing roses to coloured smoke.
This collection came complete with trumpeting birds, a defined statement as well as evocative imagery and film. What follows in the A/W 10-11 collection is a slightly cleaner evolution of the unexpected shapes and lines contouring the body. The patterns are purposely circular and pod-like which creates the pockets of volume. We could get poetic and talk about the foetal nuances in Asim's work but from my perspective, I'm more interested in the structural feats that somehow manage to avoid becoming overwrought...
... as I came to discover when another triangular box arrived at the office. This time, it was a lighter affair and nestled in amongst tissue paper was that flash of pale pink again but fortunately, it turned out to be a wearable form of this colour...
... a diaphanous organdy creation trimmed with pleated satin-organza that informs the way the dress juts out at the neck and along down the front as well as the back. Asim terms this shade a 'winter pink' and this shade is echoed in one of the pieces from the A/W 10-11 collection above. For me though, a flash of palest pink has no seasonal boundaries and right now when contrasted with the slight fuddy-duddy-ness of my mum's old Burberry trench, the dress is tamed, contained and left to stun and shine against the backdrop of the Uniqlo khaki skinny jeans...
(With Burberry trench, Unqilo t-shirt, Uniqlo jeans, Marni shoes)
