Craig Green’s new collection is a musing on connection and human touch

Craig Green celebrates ten years with a two-seasons-in-one collection that muses on connection, loneliness and the human body – featuring sculptural adornment inspired by wrestler’s dummies

Craig Green A/W 2023 collection
Craig Green A/W 2023 and S/S 2024 collection
(Image credit: Photography by Amy Gwatkin, courtesy of Craig Green)

Craig Green remembers being taught to sew by his godfather, an upholsterer, one of the craftspeople the British menswear designer looked to this season for a collection that marks his ten years in business. His godfather had helped Green with his early collections – first presented as part of talent incubator Fashion East – and here worked alongside the designer on a series of sculptures inspired by the human-shaped dummies used for wrestling training.

’We were looking at work that we've done in the past and work that we'd like to do in the future,’ says Green, who is reticent to make too much of the landmark year, though the collection – which muses on the idea of human touch and connection – marked an opportunity ‘to do something a bit different’. Eschewing the runway show and its typical two-seasons-a-year schedule, Green instead chose to create a single collection to span the entire year which will arrive in stores in two drops. (The first arrives in stores this month; the second will be released in around six months’ time.)

Craig Green on his combined A/W 2023 and S/S 2024 collection

Craig Green A/W 2023 collection

Craig Green A/W 2023 and S/S 2024 collection

(Image credit: Photography by Amy Gwatkin, courtesy of Craig Green)

‘I think after the last show [held in Paris in June 2022], I had a lot of personal frustrations of things that I couldn't get to the right place or things that I hadn’t finished,’ Green explains. ‘So I felt like this was the right thing to do for the team, for the ten years. We always like to work in a way where anything can become anything and things are changing constantly. We thought: wouldn’t it be nice to work on concepts and ideas without those set deadlines?’

Sculptural adornment has defined Green’s collections since his debut show at London Fashion Week in 2013, which included shards of wood – evocative of broken-up fencing – covering the models’ faces (subsequent seasons have seen increasingly complex sculptures, including S/S 2023’s ‘decorated men’, where models were hung with objects including moulded leather saddles, ladders and riding stirrups). 

For this new collection, he was inspired by photographs of wrestlers and the cushion-like, human-sized dummies that are used for solo practice by those in martial arts.

Craig Green A/W 2023

Craig Green A/W 2023 and S/S 2024 collection

(Image credit: Photography by Amy Gwatkin, courtesy of Craig Green)

‘They’re like these weird kind of padded people – we kept calling them our padded friends,’ Green smiles of the designs, which in the lookbook hang off the models’ bodies as if in a strange embrace. ‘Some of the original ones we looked at had their height and weight on them, almost like dumbells, so you could pick the size of the person you wanted to wrestle with. The way you see them depends on the way you think – there’s maybe something romantic about them, but there’s also something dark because they are made from this kind of fake leather that’s used in medical beds and crash mats.’

The sculptures led him to a musing on connection, a subject he believes is prescient in an increasingly atomised society reliant on digital means of communication (Green himself has been playing around with AI technology, finding it both ‘terrifying and exciting’). ‘[The sculptures] almost feel like a way to interact with someone again – to learn what a leg feels like, what a foot feels like. There’s something beautiful about them; somebody in the studio said that we should send them to people who are lonely.’

Craig Green A/W 2023 collection

Craig Green A/W 2023 and S/S 2024 collection

(Image credit: Photography by Amy Gwatkin, courtesy of Craig Green)

The clothing itself – which is made in the ‘atelier’ side of the studio – saw Green attempt to capture a feeling of freedom, with several of the pieces draped onto the body or featuring multifunctional elements to transform their appearance (’I think people always expect something more rigid from us; here it was about the idea of movement and drape,’ he says). Others riff on hallmarks of the label from Green’s decade-long career, like a complex multi-layered jacket with intricate cord motifs or generous, near-monastic silhouettes in dramatic hooded scarves.

As for how the two seasons in the collection – which were largely designed separately, and later combined – worked together, Green says it felt like a surprisingly coherent process. ‘There was a stage where we were thinking: is it all going to feel alien to each other? But then it felt like we found a through line, which wasn’t apparent from the beginning.’

Craig Green A/W 2023

Craig Green A/W 2023 and S/S 2024 collection

(Image credit: Photography by Amy Gwatkin, courtesy of Craig Green)

It was part of the reason that several of the looks are presented in duos, as if mirrored. ‘It started with the knitwear, showing two different versions of the stripe – in colour or in monochrome,’ he explains. ‘The balance between each other felt new. I kept thinking it was about loneliness, but it’s actually going back to that idea of connection. You know, it’s the bonds that you have with other people – with your friends, your family – which show you who you are. They are a mirror to yourself. And for this season, that felt right.’

craig-green.com

Fashion Features Editor

Jack Moss is the Fashion Features Editor at Wallpaper*, joining the team in 2022. Having previously been the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 and 10 Men magazines, he has also contributed to titles including i-D, Dazed, 10 Magazine, Mr Porter’s The Journal and more, while also featuring 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.

Read more
Craig Green Ecco ECCO.kollektive jacket and shoes
The story behind Craig Green’s extraordinary ‘jigsaw puzzle’ leather jackets
Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025 Winners S/S 2025 Hodakova
Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: our fashion winners harness ‘the power of wow’
Marco Capaldo 16Arlington AW 2025 collection
16Arlington’s Marco Capaldo on ‘turning up the volume’ with an A/W 2025 collection rooted in 1980s cinema
Prada A/W 2025 menswear show at A/W 2025 Menswear Month
The Wallpaper* A/W 2025 menswear trend report
Renaissance Renaissance Emerging Fashion Designers 2025
These eight on-the-rise fashion designers are set to define 2025
Miu Miu A/W 2025 best runway sets show spaces
Unpacking A/W 2025’s best runway sets, which captured a mood of longing and escape
Latest in Fashion & Beauty
perfume bottle archive Cristalleries de Nancy
This perfume bottle archive was nearly lost. Now, it offers a rare whiff of fragrance history
thom browne palm beach store
In Thom Browne’s newest store, prep meets Palm Beach
Johanna Parv A/W 2025 Young London Designer Uprising
Johanna Parv’s ‘engineered formalwear’ is made for the woman on the move
Azzedine Alaïa and Carla Sozzani, 2016
Carla Sozzani on a life in art and fashion: ‘I wanted to change how magazines were made’
Prada Slipper Mens S/S 2025 runway show
These fringed Prada slippers capture a lived-in elegance
Graphic S/S 2025 fashion trend
For S/S 2025, streamlined silhouettes with a graphic edge
Latest in Feature
the toteme store in China by herzog & de meuron
Bold, geometric minimalism rules at Toteme’s new store by Herzog & de Meuron in China
lo scoglio byron bay review
Wallpaper* checks in at Lo Scoglio: an Australian vacation rental with regenerative principles
zaha hadid architects future projects
The upcoming Zaha Hadid Architects projects set to transform the horizon
black and white image of kitchen
‘La Cocina’: the kitchen is a chaotic melting pot of contemporary culture in Alonso Ruizpalacios’ new film
lean lui guide to hong kong
A local’s guide to Hong Kong, by photographer Lean Lui
people at watch show
What can we expect from Watches and Wonders 2025?