Apologies for the posting gap. Some of you will know that I'm currently doing my usual stint in Paris of covering shows for Dazed Digital so I'm temporarily decamped back to my old hat of running ragged during shows, chasing after designers for backstage interviews and scouring the front row for interesting people to pounce on.
In the meantime, I've got another phrase to reconsider and get all pedantic about. Geek chic - another odious turn of phrase (although not quite as bad as pretending that the word "rock" actually referred to something genuinely rock n' roll) for multiple reasons but mainly because it's become a lazy tag to label anyone/anything that features a heavy black pair of specs. Bung on some Woody Allen-esque glasses and BAM, it's apparently GEEK CHIC! When I saw Macao-born, London-based designer Steven Tai 's S/S 13 collection, centred around bookish types enjoying all the pleasures of a library, I immediately thought that geek chic needed a redefinition, one that fitted what Tai had produced Tai ransacked bolts of fabric to create layer upon layer of texture in ways that mean many of the silhouettes in this graduate crossover S/S 13 collection are exaggerated to the extreme. Take for instance the suspender trousers which are bulked up at the waistband with multiple layers to form a rigid waistline. The layers refer to pages in a book as do the woven embossed texture, resembling papyrus. The shredded crepe with embroidered fish embedded underneath the threads is a potently sweet and craft-based gesture from Tai. Every rough edge, awkward silhouette and deceptive tears and gaps in the fabric have a geekish obssessive quality to it as you look up close and it all looks even more complicated than at first glance.
Tai takes his inner geek to another level as he made catwalk waves with his pen nib dress that was constructed from 795 fountain pen nibs, each one mounted on tiny motors so that they spun round with adjustable speed, creating a hypnotic shimmer. Watch the video to believe it and spot Tai's father in the video helping his son to install the motors. These technological feats make you think of the possibilities of designers putting their mind at work and maybe getting fabric embellishment to move in this way. If moving particles on garments aren't your thing, then at the very least, his methodology of fabric innovation - layering pieces together, cutting up huge amounts of fabric to create these brilliant textures and knowing that every rip and tear is highly strategic - would impress most. It certainly did that at this year's Hyeres festival, as Tai won the Chloe prize of EUR10,000, impressing a jury presided over by Yohji Yamamoto. For Tai, he's keen on carrying on the MA and he definitely has the foundation to be given the Louise Wilson-once over in her legendarily scary lessons. Here's hope he raises enough to get there eventually...
