Christopher Kane Fall 2016 RTW transformed the primitive lives of hoarders into an elegant, eccentric and genteel catwalk.
Christopher Kane went surreal for his Fall/Winter 2016 collection. Kane based his collection on “beauty expired, dead and thrown away.” “I’ve been obsessed with hoarders and women, who are collect-a-maniacs,” Kane said after show, which was based on the notion of ‘lost and found’. These were odd women; social outsiders, who collect cardboard boxes and live primitive lives, but are queens of their own worlds.
Kane transformed those cardboard boxes into camel coats, and used appliqué and embroidery to represent hoarded objects. It was odd, but it was elegant, like so much else on Kane’s catwalk. Then, there were certain items and decorations that popped up everywhere: Leather came in the form of trousers, gloves, tote bags, and dresses in nude and black; floral corsages and maypole-style ribbons were messily arranged over a variety of frocks and tops; and most models wore seemingly granny chic plastic rain hoods—the work of Stephen Jones.
Expiry were key for this season, and it is this idea of the cessation, which allows for the new, revitalization and renewal. This was reflected in the modernist painterly aesthetic of florals – therefore key to the look, as well as through elements of deconstruction and reconstruction.
Kane’s fashions are always inventive, somehow he manages to between a comfortably straddle commercialism and artistic credibility, and this collection works. A seasoned-professional, Kane showed an incredible collection of pieces – all of which are highly covetable and the collection only adds to further cement his status as an unmissable part of London Fashion Week.