In yesterday’s post we looked at an installation entitled "Grove" by artist and architect Philip Beesley inspired by his work with fashion designer Iris van Herpen, briefly analyzing also the film accompanying it, "Grove Cradle".
In the dream-like vision in the film, there are a few mineral, liquid and organic forms, quite often they are represented as spiked configurations, reminiscent of Beesley's signature ecosystems of lace-like materials and skeleton-like structures.
While Beesley mainly collaborates with van Herpen, there are actually other fashion designers who would be a perfect match with Beesley, among them Noir Kei Ninomiya.
In his A/W 21-22 collection there are actually a few creations featuring thin, stainless-steel spikes that call to mind Beesley's structures.
Erupting from tops, leather jackets and the bodices of dresses and forming sci-fi-like armours, these punk embellishments (actually treated to make them painless to touch) were conceived by the designer as ways to experiment more with a variety of materials and in particular with metals.
Voluminous sculptural designs made in a foil-like material also formed flower blooming in a gravity-defying explosion of shimmering textiles.
While materials and metals were the main inspirations for this season, forms were also a key point as proved by those exploding silhouettes and shapes that evoked the spiked and blooming structures seen in Beesley's film, while ushering in at the same time an avant-garde "metabolic" fashion system similar to Beesley's living architecture, conceived not just as a collection of wearable sculptures and garments, but as entites that breathe, live, protect and even defend (see the spikes…) the wearer.
Image credits for this post
Film stills from "Grove Cradle", directed by Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones in collaboration with Philip Beesley, music by Salvador Breed, 2021