High concept fashion tends to swing one of two ways: at best it can be inspirational, exhilarating and unexpected, pushing and breaking boundaries; at worst, it can be gratuitously complex, impractical and, dare we say it, pointless. So when the new creative director of Issey Miyake, Dai Fujiwara, chose to design his second catwalk collection based entirely around wind, and enrolled wind-harnesser extraordinaire James Dyson to design the set, we were intrigued and upbeat that this was going to be spectacular. And certainly a spectacle, at least.
Click on the image above to see how the collection and show were put together
As more information trickled through about what the collection and set design would involve, all things looked promising. Fujiwara’s interpretation of wind was extensive. He disassembled Dyson’s vacuum cleaners and created a capsule collection, ‘Cyclone’ based around the various constituent parts - a wand handle became a sleeve, a cyclone assembly kit became a skirt, a hose became a belt.
Dyson’s set design promised great things similarly. The CADs showed six yellow ‘cyclone machines’ (yellow tubes attached to wind machines) placed at stages down the catwalk that would blow strong wind at each of the models, animating the collection and making Fujiwara’s dream of ‘living with wind’ a temporary reality.
The resulting show was indeed impressive, though perhaps not quite as slick as the CADs promised (but then again is anything, ever?). The models entered the catwalk through a large yellow tube, as if emerging from a giant Dyson, to a soundtrack that ranged in intensity from the drama of Gustav Mahler to Tibetan Buddhist rites, all the while, interspersed with a range of wind noises, from the drone of a vacuum to the roar of a hurricane.
Consisiting of six sections, we were taken from Dune (stunning pleated dresses and jumpsuits that bounced gracefully when the model walked), through Breeze, to Cyclone, the climax. At this point the cyclone machines unveiled and the tubes hung over the catwalk, operated manually by men behind the audience who dragged the tubes backwards and forwards, blowing wind into the outfits of each model as they passed. The second half took us through Sail & Weather Forecast, Wind from China and Heaven’s Breath, our favourite – a gossamer thin range of coats and dresses that captured the artificial wind the best and billowed into spectacularly undulating balloons.
If there was anything that niggled it had little to do with the clothing or the set design, but perhaps the seamless use of both to enhance each other. Often we found ourselves watching the cyclone machines and missing the effect they had on the garments, and at times, when the wind was doing extraordinary things to Eugene Souleiman’s hair creations, the outfits stayed rigid and motionless. In its constituent parts the show was extraordinary, beautiful and interesting. But much like the deconstructed bits of the Dysons, if the parts had fitted together into a more coherent whole, it might have sucked us in and blown us away.
Click here to read our interview with James Dyson.
INFORMATION
Related articles
James Dyson interview
The Wind: Issey Miyake and Dyson
- Website
- http://www.isseymiyake.com
