Fridays for Futures are back after a long break due to Covid-19 and today students organised demos and events all over the world to raise awareness about climate change. Not many fashion houses actually directly mentioned climate change in their recent collections, but recycling and upcycling have been on a few designers' minds. American-born, London-based Harris Reed is one of them.
On his path to change the fashion system from the inside, Harris Reed, emerged like you do these times - online, debuting his Graduation Collection (he studied at Central Saint Martins) on Instagram (where Harry Styles' stylist Harry Lambert also discovered Reed in 2017),while in lockdown in May 2020. Digital and therefore different from the physical 1945 exhibit Théâtre de la Mode, Reed's showcase actually had the same aim and objective of that early fashion event - taking fashion to people in a theatrical way and telling a story about the young designer. In lockdown Reed learnt indeed to collaborate with other people even without being able to meet them and to play around with new technologies.
Reed's images - inspired by rebellious characters combining history and pop culture, from the New York Dolls to the British dancer Lindsay Kemp, and Henry Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey - were the result of a collaborative effort with fellow design student Bella Thomas who worked on the makeup, illustrator Lukas Palumbo who hand-painted sets, and animator Lauren Dean Hunter.
The results were a combination of fashion, animation and illustration revolving around the theme of gender-fluidity with models wearing grand silhouettes and hats the size of a small flying saucer, voluminous looks that were almost a reaction to the lockdown fashions we had become accustomed to.
The four physical looks, three pairs of boots (the "H Boot", inspired by glam and the '70s) and two digital looks plus a custom-made AR filter in the form of a white hat - intended by the designer as a symbol of liberation - looked opulent, eccentric and inventive. The images looked a bit like tarot cards and the hats vaguely called to mind something surrealist like the Alchemist's outfit complete with towering hat in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic "The Holy Mountain".
One of the outfits - a tailored jacket with peak shoulders with a hoop-skirt draped in tulle and hot pink satin - eventually ended up in the December 2020 issue of US Vogue donned by Harry Styles, opening up a debate about men wearing dresses and outraging more conservative people such as Republican Candace Owens who posted at the time a Tweet about bringing back "manly men".
Interest around Reed soared: while still studying Reed interned at Gucci for nine months, became the protégé of Alessandro Michele, modelled in Gucci's Resort 2019 show in Arles and starred in the fashion house's 2019 Mémoire d’une Odeur fragrance campaign.
He also dressed other celebrities, including Solange and Ezra Miller, scored a beauty partnership with MAC Cosmetics on a makeup collection and a jewelry collaboration with Missoma, and created capsules for Matchesfashion.com
His first collection post-graduation, unveiled in February 2021, featured six demi-couture ensembles that looked again extreme and gender-fluid.
Made once again in lockdown, the collection, promoted with a film, taught Reed to be resourceful and prompted him to upcycle fabrics and spray-paint tulle (a trendy exercise at the moment favoured by tulle enthusiasts à la Tomo Koizumi). Reed's passion for maximalist fluidity returned in his new collection showcased on Tuesday, at the end of London Fashion Week.
Maybe surprised by the fact that, after Covid, quite a few designers seem to have decided to go back to the usual schedule and conform once again to a pre-Coronavirus runway show in an attempt to rebuild the fashion industry as it was, Reed opted instead for an intimate off-schedule show at the Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park with a performance by musician Kelsey Lu. The presentation only included 10 of his demi-couture looks made with upcycled materials.
While shopping for records, books and clothes on the website of British charity chain Oxfam, Reed found the bridal and grooms wear sections and decided to give a new life to bridal gowns and groom's suits, twisting the traditional concept of wedding.
Rather than merely merging half of a suit with half a gown, an experiment that has been attempted already in fashion, or ripping the designs and reconstructing them, Reed fluidly merged them.
He added for example romantic veil panels to cropped tailored tuxedo jackets with big lapels and matched them with his signature flared trousers; he created corseted pieces for men that elongated the body making the wearer look like a supernatural being; included in the collection more of his supersized tulle gowns and, by cutting down a black suit and a white satin dress into srips, he composed a dazzle camouflage pattern slightly reminiscent of Gareth Pugh's designs.
The wide-brim hats of his graduate collection also returned, as flat as the halo of a saint in a two-dimensional painting. It was as Reed had merged together the monochromatic wardrobe of the extravagant Alchemist from Jodorowsky's film.
Reed may be more prone to design costumes, something he may have naturally taken from his father's links with Hollywood, he is indeed the son of the Oscar-winning movie producer Nick Reed, also founder of Shareability (a connection that puts Reed in a privileged position compared to other fashion designers of his age).
Earlier on in September he was invited by Anna Wintour to the Met Gala and created for Iman (View this photo) a look inspired by 1920s showgirls' attires (think about actress and dancer Doris Hill to get an idea View this photo) and made with the support of Dolce & Gabbana's Alta Moda ateliers that provided Reed with the necessary fabrics.
Reed has got a few intriguing ideas, but above all he seems to have more passion to change the game: he is part of a new generation of designers who do not seem interested in being part of a destructive creative cycle, a hamster wheel that churns out one ready-to-wear collection after the other without a pause, without a break, but believes that a collection can and should be season-less. That's why for the time being he has decided to focus on made-to-order pieces and collaborations.
Therefore the garments from this collection will not be available in shops, but will only be sold to private clients, while one piece will be displayed at Oxfam's Selfridges space and sold for charity. Reed is not the only designer taking this path and his will to focus on self-expression and gender-fluidity, may change the industry more than Covid-19 already did.
That said, Reed is only 25 years old, and at the moment he is still divided between a series of projects, from his demi-couture and costumes to his modelling career and his candles sold in collaboration with his mother (an ex-model and candlemaker). While time will tell us who he truly is (a fashion or a costume designer?) there is something he will have to do - expand his vocabulary when it comes to shapes and silhouettes (especially regarding trousers) and leave behind his beloved glue gun at some point if he genuinely wants to take his designs to a more artisanal, demi-couture level.
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