As you may remember, Hussein Chalayan's Resort and Spring/Summer 2015 Menswear collections are both entitled "Moor's Chorus" and feature a series of motifs and patterns inspired by the architectural features of North Africa, with a focus on windows in particular.
The theme of gazing at hidden areas, revealing secret courtyards, trees and irrigation systems through window-like openings on a dress or on a shirt returned in Chalayan's S/S 2015 womenswear collection, entitled this time "Moor's Gaze".
The "looking through" theme came back in the perforations and broderie anglaise-like motifs, culminating in the final gowns with surprising embroidered images of veiled women peeping out from the folds of a dress as if they were half hidden in a doorway.
North Africa and the Moorish influence in Spain - themes that will be tackled by the exhibition "Medieval Morocco. An Empire from Africa to Spain" (opening next week) at the Louvre, and that call to mind the fascination for North Africa of designers like Yves Saint Laurent - were the keys to unlock the collection.
Aerial views (yes, once again) and maps of the complex networks of irrigation channels, fountains and pools dotted with evergreen plants similar to the system that serves the Alhambra, were turned into geometric motifs on fluid gowns.
The irrigation channel inspiration worked well also on a conceptual level: the Moors employed water as it cooled the air within an enclosed space, while the orientation of their decorated walls for courtyards captured the wind and reduced the summer heat, and cooling garments that protect from and reduce heat are always in the mind of designers working on a Spring/Summer season.
Colour was provided by the evergreen plants scattered on the print that at times called to mind the layout and the lush interiors of famous gardens like the courtyard of the Maidens in the Alcázar of Seville.
Motifs that seemed lifted from architect, designer and design theorist Owen Jones' chromolithographs of details of woodwork from various rooms in the Alhambra, decorated sculpted bustiers and dresses, while Moroccan lattice prints and decorative patterns on tailored suits called to mind the explorations of the design principles of Moorish architecture in Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament (1856).
Throughout the collection Chalayan also continued his studies of transformative clothes (that started with the A/W 2013 collection) with a jacket that, when taken off, turned into part of a dress; a simple silk blouse that could be altered with a series of drawstrings in the back and sunglasses integrated in a turban-like scarf (could this transformative element be a distant reference to the dichotomy between the lush interior of the Moorish gardens and the dry landscape outside their walls?).
While this collection was a story of shadows and lights, seen and unseen, revealed and concealed, it was also a tale of cross-cultural architectural elements mixed and combined in a clever way.
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