Most regular joes can barely get their heads round a manbag – well, more about they better get ready to accessorise to within an inch of their lives because that’s what the designers in the MAN show have got planned for them next summer, seek with a strong emphasis on cuffs, bags, shoes and, er, ribcages.
First out was Katie Eary with the collection ‘Naked Lunch’, taking its title from the seminal William Burroughs work, a text featuring a veritable rainbow of topics ranging from child murder to heroin (last season was built around Orwell’s Animal Farm). Eary’s collection was like an autopsy, with the inside of the body externalised and represented in fabric and metalwork.
The opulent gold bone and pearl ribcages (reminiscent of Shaun Leane) seemed a curious proposal to accessorise with our own insides, with drug use and the crumbling of the body inferred by the cartilage-like red rope shoulderpieces, human hair, frayed denim and heart and organ prints. It was a theme that Eary extended to maximum capacity in a real attention to the most frightening of details.
The models’ faces were often imprisoned in metal masks, chainmail and helmets making them resemble dystopic, nightmarish soldiers, with laser-cut brass sandals and gold skeletal hands completing an extraordinarily unsettling, inventive and ultimately transfixing vision. Yet it was a theatrical edge that was mitigated by a selection of completely wearable pieces, featuring tailored shorts, a studded leather jacket and graphic print t-shirts.
All photographs by Matt Bramford
Categories ,Fashion East, ,Katie Eary, ,Lulu Kennedy, ,Man, ,Naked Lunch, ,Orwell, ,William S Boroughs
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