Chalayan, Hussein

▪ 2001

      The 2000 autumn-winter ready-to-wear show staged by Hussein Chalayan at Sadler's Wells, an east London dance theatre, was such a critical hit that it propelled the 30-year-old Turkish Cypriot designer to the designation of British Designer of the Year—for the second consecutive year—by the British Fashion Council. The audience compared his presentation with performance art. Chalayan's stage set consisted of modernist furniture—just four chairs and a circular coffee table set up at the foot of his catwalk. Throughout the show, models wearing his signature elegant, skillfully designed ensembles—floral-sprigged tops and skirts and black coats made of layered fabric and edged in white—moved by these pieces. At the finale of the show, a model approached the table, removed an inner wood ring from it, and stepped into the table; the furniture piece was instantly fashioned as a skirt.

      By blending such clever theatrics with his beautiful designs, Chalayan became known as one of fashion's most intellectual designers. In a previous season he had dressed a troupe of models in traditional female Muslim headdresses but left their bodies naked. His presentation outraged the Muslim community, of which he was a member, but attracted the attention of the press. At another show models wore metal prongs that twisted their facial expressions into screams. In explaining his penchant for going to such stylistic extremes, Chalayan said simply, “Fashion is so transient. I am trying to give my work constant development, both conceptually and aesthetically.” Unlike the designers whose catwalk theatrics overshadowed their clothes, Chalayan's work was remembered as clearly as his avant-garde styling. Shortly after his autumn-winter show, the London department store Harvey Nichols stocked his work for the first time. Although there was speculation that Chalayan would succeed Jil Sander as design director of her former company—which she sold to the Prada group—as the year drew to a close, Chalayan was still based in London designing his own line as well as knitwear for TSE New York.

      Chalayan was born Huseyin Chaglayan on Aug. 12, 1970, in Nicosia, Cyprus, to Muslim parents. He moved to London with his family while still a child. After graduating from the prestigious British design college Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design, London, he established his own independent design label in 1993. Chalayan's big break came soon thereafter when a collection that he developed was presented during London Fashion Week. His Fashion Week debut was critically acclaimed, as were his subsequent shows, which often featured body-inhibiting designs—such as his cocoon dress, a sleeveless creation that bound the arms of its wearer to the sides of the body but provided slits for the release of the hands. In 1995 he won a design competition sponsored by the Absolut Vodka distillers. Two years later the Victoria and Albert Museum included his creations in an exhibition entitled “The Cutting Edge: 50 Years of British Fashion,” and that same year his aubergine-coloured silk beaded gown was chosen as the dress of the year by the Museum of Costume in Bath.

Bronwyn Cosgrave

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