Fashion goesZen

Hussein Chalayan is surely one of the most promising and innovative young fashion designers in the business. His runway shows overflow with ideas, edgy new concepts and an aire of techno-savvy contemporary designs.

Chalayan was a strong and very early adopter of the wet look leggings trend (if not creating it altogether) in his 2007 Automn/Winter "Airborne" Collection. In early 2008, his Spring/Summer "Readings", refined the idea of LEDs (which we also saw in "Airborne") when he incorporated laser LEDs into dresses he created in collaboration with Swarovsky. (The LEDs were done by Moritz Waldemeyer, more details in an interview with Chalayan.) For the Autumn/Winter 2008 "Grains and Steele" collection, which explored the indoor/outdoor theme, he invented a unique sock boot with German legware label Falke.

After Chalayan in February 2008 had been appointed as the creative director for German sportswear manufacturer Puma, the global sports label grew to such a big fan that they later announced they had purchased a majority stake in his label.

His biggest coup to date is the current Spring/Summer 2009 collection "Inertia" which centers around the idea of graphic components and fractal landscapes (see the picture above). Frozen into ridiculous forms the dresses resemble screens for patterns which are projected onto the fabric. Outstanding! We can't wait to see what's next.

More on Laserbeams in dresses,  about HC on designboom, an ELLE feature, beQueen, interview in a German newspaper, an architecture experiment in Dover, speculation about inspiration on Inertia, or inspiration for the knit boots, about the Puma partnership, laser-beam similarities with Star Trek, etc.

Official site of Hussein Chalayan.