Dear Shaded Viewers and Diane,
There’s a suppleness to Craig Green’s spring 2020 collection, unusual perhaps for him. Green has from the start found his path by aiming high – not in a simplistic sense, that of a young designer’s ambition say, but aiming high spiritually, finding his inspiration in the higher drives of the human soul. We’ve come to know him for his bodies framed, for clothing as windows on one’s vulnerabilities, like scaffolding to build on and climb with floating ribbons in tow. And this is the case still, yet this season a newfound softness, a sensuality of touch found its way in, standing for perhaps a different kind of spirituality, earthborn and mystical, vaguely folkloric. Shiny silks had something of the Far East to them. Pellucid nylons, doily combos and trompe l’oeil glossy outerwear printed with the opalescent outline of the male form beneath all followed, playing out a story of magic and illusion. Wind chimes-like industrial ornaments in red and white were carried by hand or strapped to the models’ ribcages as they walked through a mirrored catwalk – others wore tunics of totemic motives pixelated into gingham, whilst round little mirrors hemmed with blue embroidery featured throughout the outerwear and workwear pieces. To the notes of Current 93’ Into The Menstrual Night I go, yesterday’s show passed by like a morning rite, its polychromatic repetitions, so distinctive of Green’s work, acquiring the meaning of refrains, the rhythm of rhymes. Many among London’s designers react to the uncertain times we live in via survivalist, post-apocalyptic streetwear in all the shades of dust and concrete – and customers do respond to that, no question there. But what Craig Green proposes in the face of it is something different, possibly bolder: to embrace and honour the wind that sways us, this perpetual instability of presence, with colourful bursts of joy.
Later,
Silvia
