Hussein Chalayan's After Words: When Living Room Furniture Became Clothing on the Runway
In February 2000, Hussein Chalayan unveiled his Fall/Winter 2000 collection titled After Words in London. The show featured a meticulously arranged living room scene with a family seated before the models made their entrance. As the performance progressed, models stripped chair covers to fashion dresses and carried the chairs as if they were luggage. The climax of the show included a model stepping into a circular coffee table, transforming it into a wooden skirt. Chalayan expressed that the chair-cover removal captivated him more than the table's metamorphosis, which later became iconic. Drawing inspiration from wartime displacement and his mother's experiences during Cyprus's division in 1974, the collection examined the dual roles of possessions as clothing and furniture. He revisited this theme in subsequent collections, such as Before Minus Now (Spring/Summer 2000) and One Hundred and Eleven (Spring/Summer 2007).
Key facts
- Hussein Chalayan presented After Words, his Fall/Winter 2000 collection, in London in February 2000.
- The runway set included four chairs with gray slipcovers, a low coffee table, and a television, with a family seated in the space before models appeared.
- Models removed chair covers and wrapped them into dresses, then folded and carried away the chairs like luggage.
- In the finale, a model removed the center of the circular wooden coffee table, stepped inside, and lifted it to create a rigid wooden skirt.
- Chalayan said the chair-stripping sequence interested him more than the coffee table transformation, which became the show's most famous image.
- The collection was inspired by wartime displacement and Chalayan's family history in Cyprus; his mother was forced from her home as a teenager during violence before the island's division in 1974.
- Before Minus Now (Spring/Summer 2000) featured a fiberglass dress with remote-controlled panels that opened like aircraft parts.
- One Hundred and Eleven (Spring/Summer 2007) used concealed mechanics to move garments through historical silhouettes.
Entities
Artists
Institutions
- designboom
Locations
- London
- United Kingdom
- Cyprus