Word: chalayan
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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That's the paradoxical thing about innovators. They show reverence for tradition but disdain for the status quo. Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, profiled by staff writer Michele Orecklin, borrows ideas from literature and anthropology but animates them with materials provided by new technology. In that vein, Susan Casey, a TIME Inc. editor at large who designed our new sister publication eCompany Now, paid a visit to typeface designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, who take classical styles and put electricity into them to create the hieroglyphics of the cyber-era. Staff writer Joel Stein writes about industrial designer...
...Hussein Chalayan has fashioned clothing of unrippable paper that can be folded into envelopes, a dress designed like a kite that can actually fly and a coffee table of malleable wood that swirls into a skirt. What saves his fanciful designs from unraveling into mere novelty is the fact that Chalayan, 29, an exquisite tailor, uses the show pieces to inspire his eminently more wearable clothes. "These pieces might not sell," he says, "but they express the concept behind each collection." The result is feminine clothes that are spare, clean and architecturally constructed to create volume without frills...
Rather than reference styles from past eras, Chalayan, who is Turkish Cypriot and based in London, molds each collection around a concept derived from outside the fashion world, whether it be the role of women in Islamic society (chadors of varying lengths) or the plight of families forced to leave their homes in times of war (the inspiration for the table skirt). He is equally dedicated to exploring technology (plastic dresses with shifting mechanized panels, and fabrics adorned with computer-generated prints). "The only new work you can do in fashion is via technology," he says. "It lets you create...