Behind-the-scenes with Hussein Chalayan as his brand turns 25

Hussein Chalayan may not have had his 25th anniversary in mind when creating his autumn/winter 2019 collection, but the theme, ‘pretension’, is certainly fitting for a designer who has often been dismissed as avant-garde, or even pretentious, over the years. In Chalayan’s lexicon, the word pretension is not a negative one, but intrinsically linked to his design process: creating a narrative to take his audience elsewhere. “Creativity [is] pretending to be in other worlds; it’s there to transport you, to take you away from your daily life,” Chalayan tells Vogue from his studio in Camden, north London.

His new collection—which has the same theme as pre-fall 2019 and menswear AW19—examines the ideas of role-play and the image one projects to the outside world. There are headpieces inspired by voguing—the 1980s dance style, itself inspired by models’ catwalk poses—as well as masks that comment on the artificiality of makeup, an idea that ties in neatly with the prints used in the collection.

Pretension, for Chalayan, is also about performance. The Turkish-Cypriot designer has been once more inspired by Bunraku, the Japanese art of puppetry, using “agents” to animate his designs on the catwalk by lifting the panels of the dresses, “creating the wind when the model moves”. A similar idea was used in his SS11 film, Sakoku, although Chalayan says this reference to his past work was not linked to his 25th anniversary, but simply because it “fit in with the theme”.

Despite the undeniably theatrical element of many of Chalayan’s shows (Sadler’s Wells Theatre is the designer’s long-standing London show venue), he insists the spectacle isn’t his prime objective. “I have shown very beautifully cut clothes with no showpieces, and have had a really good season,” he says. “The show element is not the important thing; the important thing is how you translate ideas into clothes.”

Even more significant than the ideas, he says, is the way his clothes are created. “It’s about craftsmanship,” Chalayan explains. “If you look at the amount of work we put into the way things are made, most of our time goes on that.” In fact, Chalayan believes he’s been misportrayed over the years, dismissed by some as simply a showman, although the rise of the digital age has helped alter this perception. “[It] made the whole situation much more democratic, because you’d be able to show your whole collection to everyone, even before you left the venue,” he says. “That meant that everyone could see everything you were doing, and you weren’t in the hands of editors that wanted to make you come across just as this avant-garde designer.”

Even in his early days, Chalayan says he was focused on designing wearable pieces, not garments that would sit in museums. “In the first seasons, we were making tailoring,” he says. “I would be there for hours, doing sleeve heads with my technical team—eliminating seams, and this kind of thing.” While he was widely regarded as a conceptual designer, his pieces were still being worn. “My whole staff wore it. We were selling in department stores, and in boutiques,” he recalls.

This desire to create wearable and well-cut clothes has been evident over the years, carrying through to his latest collection, which features oversized tailoring and a classic colour palette of grey, navy and mustard yellow. “If you went to our shop right now, you’d be able to wear 99 per cent [of the clothes],” he says. “Otherwise we couldn’t really survive; you can’t sell clothes [that aren’t wearable].” With an equally accessible price point (starting at £270), Chalayan has fans that range from the “super-sophisticated art collector” to wealthy clients from the Middle East, who “[don’t] normally dress in these kinds of clothes”; plus a host of celebrities, including Lady Gaga (who famously arrived at the 2011 Grammy’s in a giant Chalayan egg), Katy Perry and Rihanna.

Chalayan certainly knows a thing or two about what it takes to endure in the fashion industry, after his company was forced to enter into voluntary liquidation in 2001 due to a cash-flow problem. Just five months later, he bounced back, thanks to the help of new investors—and began showing in Paris to increase the brand’s exposure, only returning to London in 2017. In 2010, he decided to drop Hussein from the brand’s name to become simply Chalayan and in January last year sold a 20 per cent stake of the company to investment platform Centricus, as part of his desire to grow the business.

Despite Chalayan’s emphasis on the commercial success of his clothes, it is undoubtedly for his showpieces that he is best known: his coffee-table skirt for AW00; his aeroplane dress for SS00; and his transforming dresses for SS07. But despite his vast archive, the designer says he can’t pick out any collections as particular favourites. “There isn’t such a thing. You do a collection hopefully because you are inspired,” he says. “It’s like saying ‘I prefer my child number one to child number three’; they’re all your babies.”

Chalayan does admit that some collections were more of a feat than others, not least because of the financial cost—meaning he doesn’t actually own some of his most iconic creations. “Some [pieces] had sponsors, because they were so costly. For instance, Swarovski own a lot of our motion dresses,” he explains. Other pieces—including the ‘possessed dress’, which changes shape when worn and was exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2016—were commissioned by museums.

As for his personal collection, Chalayan is hoping to eventually make this accessible to the public. “We want to really ignite our archive, and get it looked after properly, because there’s so much of it,” he reveals. Not only keen to cement the brand’s legacy, he also wants to make his work known to a new generation. “We want to reach younger people who don’t know about us,” Chalayan says. “And [find] new ways of communicating with them.”

Looking ahead, there are plans for new product categories, including accessories and lifestyle, as well as collaborations with artists. After opening his first store in London’s Mayfair in 2015, Chalayan also hopes to expand the brand’s bricks-and-mortar presence worldwide—particularly China, where last year he created a collection with Shanghai-based electric car company Nio.

Despite big ambitions, the designer says the Chalayan ethos will remain the same: “What’s important is to do all this by still being loyal to our approach; without selling out.” It’s a recipe that’s seen him through even the toughest times over the past quarter century, so here’s to the next 25 years.

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