Empowerment. The acknowledgment of awareness of wrongdoing yet the confidence to speak out. For Chalayan’s Autumn/Winter 17 collection, empowerment acted as the driving force for design creation, with the historic influence of European Phil-Hellenic sentiments of the early 19th Century revealing a collection of understated confidence, of symbols of awareness to the isolated individuals found within the current world order today. With structure contrasting against loose and oversized shaping, the essence of power echoed through maturity and symbolism of strengths, with the awareness of fake celebrations playing its part through the letting loose of feathers and embellishment – an ironic tone to the serious of Chalayan’s collection. Fabrication was kept clean and minimal, with shirting and wool working with hybrid shaping and traditional design to represent a wardrobe that can act as a consideration, to an unspoken definition of becoming empowered. Indeed, working with the elegant feminine tones from MODE-F music, the beauty of empowerment was found in the creation of environmental emotion, with onlookers becoming drawn into the scene that unfolded itself onstage – we were part of a setting, of a development from Act to Form that acknowledges the empowerment that is needed in the current flux of our personhood environment of today.
words by Jasmine Banbury
images by Georgia Sillitoe
with thanks to –
