Christopher Kane A/W 2016

Scene setting: The scaffolding underbelly of Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas’ latest work Empty Lot provided a raw, urban backdrop to Christopher Kane’s A/W collection, presented within the Tate Modern’s engulfing Turbine Hall.

Mood board: Titled ‘Lost and Found’, Kane envisaged an autumn collection that collaged the notions of expired beauty and forgotten treasures, reinvigorating them with his endless creativity. ‘I have always been obsessed with recluses and the image of the outsider making their own way by hoarding things away,’ explained Kane. ‘We wanted to emulate that for this collection; to take unlikely things and make them beautiful.’

Best in show: And Kane did just that with another LFW collection that walked to its own eclectic beat (or in this case internal voices). With Little Edie-style headscarves exaggerated as stiff plastic rain bonnets by Stephen Jones, Kane opened the presentation with leather tailoring, and even handbags, fashioned to resemble corrugated cardboard. Crazy hued flowers, made with the help of Lesage, soon followed and eventually joined assorted trinkets, Marabou plumage and trailing ribbons, to be pieced together into eccentric dresses with the same stream of conscious haphazardness as the documentary film Grey Gardens that no doubt inspired the season. 

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans