Gravity Fatigue
"I am not a textiles person – I cannot get excited about yarn counts or embroidery stitches... What excites me about design is finding a new way of approaching products that contain some emotional or intellectual content," – Hussein Chalayan.
The creative output of British fashion designer Hussein Chalayan oscillates between thought-provoking conceptual designs, which pass directly from studio to gallery, and eminently desirable, finely-cut women’s wear. In addition to sculpting tulle, tailoring tweed and manipulating silk brocade, Chalayan embraces the materials of carpentry, aeronautics and laser technology. His media is fashion but he is comfortable working across disciplines and regularly collaborates with musicians, technicians and craftspeople. His preoccupations centre around his Turkish-Cypriot ethnicity, geographic territories, technology and the passage of time. In his own words, his work is, '...a narrative – a form of story telling incorporating different themes'. Chalayan formed his own label in 1994, just one year after graduating from London's Central St Martin's with a collection (The Tangent Flows SS94) that comprised silk dresses that had been covered in iron filings, buried and then exhumed. (The intention was to simultaneously explore processes of growth and degradation: the result was rusty-looking, textural, garments).
Gravity Fatigue is Chalayan's first dance production. It may sound like an unnecessary career 'add on' for the designer, however, given his sensitivity to both movement and performance, it does in fact seem a completely natural step for him to be taking.“I feel very honoured to be given this opportunity at Sadler’s Wells, to be able to extend my interests and world view into the realms of performance and dance. Fashion for me is a very important part of culture, however, in many cases clothes can limit the expression of certain ideas. This production will allow me to showcase ideas which I have been collecting for many years and to build narratives around and with the body in a much broader context than ever seen before in my work.” If there was ever a designer to bridge fashion and fine art – it would be Chalayan.
This blog is in part an extract from an article by Amy de la Haye in the Literary issue of Selvedge.
Gravity Fatigue
28 – Saturday 31 October 2015Directed and designed by Chalayan working with choreographer Damien Jalet.

