JW Anderson’s collaboration with Michael Clark has arrived

JW Anderson Michael Clark collaboration — Pieces from the JW Anderson x Michael Clark collection

(Image credit: Courtesy of JW Anderson)

The provocative, pioneering British dancer and choreographer Michael Clark – who rose to prominence in London in the early 1980s – has long provided a cultural touchpoint for fashion designer Jonathan Anderson, who first discovered Clark’s work while at university in the early 2000s.

‘I became completely obsessed,’ says Anderson, who this past February at London’s Roundhouse (during London Fashion Week A/W 2023) presented an A/W 2023 collection that featured a number of pieces created in collaboration with Clark – from T-shirts and vests emblazoned with the Michael Clark Company logo to slogans and iconography taken from his performance posters and flyers (including, memorably, a phallus-emblazoned top that referenced an advertisement for a performance at The Roundhouse, a location Clark returned to throughout his career).

JW Anderson x Michael Clark has arrived

Woman on JW Anderson runway with coloured posters in background and tank top which reads 'Michael Clark' — JW Anderson A/W 2023, where the collaborative collection was first revealed

’Michael Clark is an incipit. A starter, a white page, the agitator who defied the system,’ said Anderson at the time, noting that the collection itself looked back at a number of pieces from throughout his own eponymous label’s 15-year history. ‘He is embedded deep, somewhere, in the foundation of JW Anderson and impels now the urgency of a blank slate.

‘At its core, this is a collection about fandom – completely personal, frequently irrational, often embarrassing,’ he continued. ‘As I look back through my own archive for this show, resurrecting elements from each collection of the last 15 years, Michael helped me rifle through this. It helped me pinpoint my own obsessions.’

JW Anderson Michael Clark — A shirt printed with a poster from a Michael Clark Company performance at The Roundhouse

As of this week, the capsule collection – titled JW Anderson x Michael Clark – arrives in stores and on the JW Anderson website. There is a paper bag-style clutch imprinted with the Michael Clark Company logo – alongside the T-shirts, vests and tote bags from the show which featured the same motif – as well as imagery from the collection’s show set printed across further T-shirts and shirts. Other slogans, like ‘Witch?’, ‘Sham Man’ and ‘The Dentist’ are transposed onto sweaters and caps.

‘The first time I came across Michael Clark was when I was at university,’ Anderson said this week ahead of the collection’s launch. ’It was not until I got the Michael Clark book, though, that I completely fell in love with him, and what he had contributed to the British landscape in terms of art, dance and the way that we look at things, or the way we challenge the body, or challenge the way that we see things, or perceive the idea of what we think is wrong and right.’

JW Anderson x Michael Clark is available now in stores and online.

jwanderson.com

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Jack Moss is the Fashion & Beauty Features Director at Wallpaper*, having joined the team in 2022 as Fashion Features Editor. Previously the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 Magazine, he has also contributed to numerous international publications and featured in ‘Dazed: 32 Years Confused: The Covers’, published by Rizzoli. He is particularly interested in the moments when fashion intersects with other creative disciplines – notably art and design – as well as championing a new generation of international talent and reporting from international fashion weeks. Across his career, he has interviewed the fashion industry’s leading figures, including Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Christian Lacroix, Kate Moss and Manolo Blahnik.