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Christopher Kane: Innocent Bondage
2006-09-22
Finally, three days into London Fashion Week, leaving Wednesday's rip roaring, obsessional and decidedly sexy Christopher Kane collection, one was reminded of why it's great to come to the UK season - the pleasure of seeing great raw young talent. Kane, a precocious 26-year-old talent from Motherwell, Scotland, creates sexy, structured clothes whose technical skill belie his early years. His graduate collection from St Martins last season won him the Harrods Award for design and a job as a consultant to Donatella Versace in Milan; today's runway debut confirms him as a great new talent. Considering his age, Kane is an outlandishly assured designer. His collection contained no pants, or suits, but his score and a half of naughtily erotic mini dresses packed exceptional punch. Composed of bands of skin-tight horizontal strips, lacerated with lace or nylon chords and finished with punchy brass rings, these are not clothes for the faint of heart. Stretched around the models, cut right up to the crotch, toughened up with chunky belts and made in an acid hues, they screamed for attention. Suggestive and erotic, none of them are an easy wear; but what a stylistic statement all the same. Created in day glow hues of purple, lemon and rose, freely raiding Kandinsky's bold block color designs, and worn with saucy booties, this collection had only one ultimate direction - the boudoir. The clothes did echo earlier ideas by Herve Leger and, understandably, Versace, but Kane's ebullient imagination and na?¯ve futurism gave this fashion his own remarkable DNA. "I've been obsessed with lace and ruffles for ever," Kane told FWD. He explained that he had created the couture-like webs and strands that covered his dresses with his sister and design partner Tammy. Backstage the young designer greeted journalists attired in black jeans, a gray sweater, white T-shirt and gold Vogue pendant. "I suppose it is a wee bit precious to wear the Vogue logo. But it was a 21st birthday present from me mum," beamed Kane, this city's latest new design star. Make that Kane as in extremely able.
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