Hussein Chalayan: Autobiography, Diaspora and Deconstruction
Hussein Chalayan once turned chairs into skirts and tables into dresses. VAGUE resident Benedetta Mancusi unpacks one of the most radical moments in fashion history and how Afterwords touches on the quiet devastation of displacement.
London Fashion Week, February 2000. It begins with a family of five.
Not models but real people, genuinely related to each other, sitting on a platform emerging from the darkness below. They stand, facing the audience, who must be wondering what Hussein Chalayan has in store for them. As the family members leave, in an orderly line, the set is then fully revealed: white walls, a simple, modernist room, bare if not for some pieces of 1950s suburban furniture. In the living room there is a tv set showing a Bulgarian choir, the Bulgarka Junior Quartet, who can also be seen and heard through a small window. The haunting acapella could not provide a more fitting soundtrack to what, to this day, remains one of the most inventive and ground-breaking shows in fashion history.
The first models walk in: sculpturesque hair, plastic patches under the eyes, and monochromatic black dress-coats with contrasting white piping. The designs are rather simple, clean cuts, including coats with built-in mittens. Chic and functional. The unexpected climax, and the show’s resolution, arrives when those unassuming pieces of furniture reveal their hidden function. And that’s when, as the catwalk comes to an end, the process of transformation begins. The moment fashion critics, to this day, still talk about.
“The haunting acapella could not provide a more fitting soundtrack to what, to this day, remains one of the most inventive and ground-breaking shows in fashion history. ”
Four models strut in, in plain grey dresses. Carefully, they remove the upholstery and wear the fabrics, which turn out to be shift dresses. They are wearing the chair covers, which - it must have been incredible to experience it live - fit them perfectly. While the four face the audience, immobile, staff members fold the now bare chairs into suitcases, and then place them next to the women. Finally, the final model walks in. She steps into the wooden coffee table, lifts it up, secures it to her belt and wears it as a skirt. Applause, cheering. Exquisite storytelling, and the perfect resolution for an impeccably executed show, far from the hollow, gimmicky theatricality we’ve seen in recent times (a couple of notable examples, courtesy of Coperni: the robot dogs and Bella Hadid’s spray-on dress). A show that, also, carried a deeply personal message.
To understand this moment of transformation and Chalayan as a brand, in fact, historical context and the designer’s own background are essential pieces of the puzzle.
Afterwords was conceived at the time of the Kosovo War, which brought back memories of separation and loss for the designer. Born in Cyprus in 1970, Chalayan fled his country at the age of 12, when he was forced to go into British exile. London became his new home, and he eventually studied Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins. His 2000 show is a visual representation of what home signifies, and becomes, for those who experience displacement and are forced to flee their countries, able to take only a few objects with them. In the show, home becomes the chair, the table, the upholstery. Chairs’ covers peeled off and worn as garments. Home is inhabited not in a static sense, but by living, moving bodies. Home is worn. Home is mobile.
In the end, the models do not just carry away the furniture: they inhabit it too. As Hanni Geiger observes, the very etymology of the French word for furniture, meuble, alludes to the portability of the objects inside the house as opposed to the house itself, which, of course, is non-transportable. But if somebody is forced to leave their home, the very concept of home, as something static and fixed, needs to be re-negotiated, and pieces of furniture almost become a substitute for the house itself. Small pieces of a larger story.
In his 1923 manifesto titled “Vers une architecture” (“Toward an architecture”), Le Corbusier wrote that the house is “une machine-à-habiter,” “a machine to be lived in”. He essentially believed in the careful engineering of every piece of furniture, which had to serve a purpose, a specific function. His stance stemmed from a need for practicality over ornamentality, at a time where industrialisation was re-shaping the world as we know it.
Chalayan’s show, just like a Le Corbusier design, is meticulously engineered, from beginning to end. Nothing is left to chance. For the designer, however, home is not just a machine, and the functionality of the objects goes beyond mere everyday living: their functionality is transformed, the mundane turned on its head, reflecting the diasporic experiences of those whose lives and mundanities are interrupted by wars and colonialism.
“For the designer, however, home is not just a machine, and the functionality of the objects goes beyond mere everyday living...”
These designs, as in the furniture/clothes, are not just portable objects that can be flat-packed in a haste, and they are not just clothes either: they are visual representations of memories that can be carried, and passed on. Memories of inhabited homes and interrupted lives. In Afterwords, it is the very idea of home that Chalayan explores, disassembling it just like the models do with the chairs and table.
Not for shock value, but to tell a story.
credits
words — benedetta mancusi
design — gloria ukoh