My heart strings are tugged very easily. Even as a child, when street hawkers had pleading faces on them, I would spend my pocket money buying whatever junk they were selling even though I wasn’t really the least bit interested in what they had to sell. Then as a teenager, I’d be haunting stalls on Portobello Road or Camden Town and I’d take a look at the stalls that weren’t getting so much attention and listen to what each stall-holder had to say about their wares and end up buying something because I liked their stories. It may be that these people aren’t ACTUALLY that hard-up but for some reason, I feel a lot better about spending my money on someone who actually might be counting that individual sale. I’m the same with restaurants – if a place is looking a little empty and there’s a sad looking manager staring out of the window, I will somehow wind up eating there.
Nowadays, of course I have to love what I buy but I’m also more inclined to spend my money with anyone that has a true passion about what they are selling or someone I feel a personal affinity with – this could be the vintage shoe stall in Spitalfields or Tashi London in Kingly Court, a Japanese minimalist/deconstructed label. I’m not in anyway suggesting that buying things from designers is like giving money to a charity but I think it’s clear to most of us what retailers/sellers are creaming in tons of profit and which ones are struggling and I’m all about spending money where its deserved and so often the people who deserve it the most, aren’t rolling in the dough.
So my heartstrings are tugged again as I was reading an interview with Hussein Chalayan in the latest issue of i-D. We’ve seen the spectacular shows, we’ve seen his clothes used in exhibitions and countless editorials. We call it things like ‘intellectual’ or ‘conteptual’ so that we can put his clothes in a neat pigeon holed box. But Chalayan like any other designer wants people wearing his clothes:
"I just think shut up and look at what it is. When someone buys a dress, they don’t buy it because they like the story behind it, they buy it because it looks good on them, they like the cut, the way it makes them feel."
On getting payback on his clothes being used as exhibition pieces:
"I wish we received royalties every time photographs of our work were published."
We are talking about the man who created a mechanical time machine dress, a polished wooden coffee table skirt and sugar glass dresses. You would think he has a very strong conviction with what he does but as with every designer, money is always a concern and is something that we as fashion obsessives may not always think about:
"There is the pressure to carry on doing what I want to do and on the other hand I have to survive. What would make me happier right now is for my sales to become bigger."
Even a name like Chalayan that we may all swoon over hits the money obstacle when trying to achieve his ambitions:
"In terms of developing new ways of sewing, new ways of bonding fabrics, looking at space technology and car technology. I want to go to car manufacturers and see how they use technology in making car interiros…but they think there is no money in helping me so why should they do it?"
Though we may pigeon-hole Chalayan into that box of ‘intellectual fashion’, if you look at his collections thoroughly, there is a great deal of wearability and funcionality. So it begs the question, why aren’t his collections selling like hotcakes despite the press, swoons, coverage and overall gushing over Chalayan’s shows? It literally breaks my heart because I would so want to buy Chalayan’s clothes if I had the money but I don’t have that ability. If I ever reached a stage where I could afford to, it would not be like how I used to buy things based on the seller rather than their wares because I’m passionate about the seller – Chalayan and his wares…his wonderful wonderful wares….
No comments yet? that’s surprising! This is a great post Susie.
I’ve been reading the posting and feeling myself the pain of this great designer.
It is true what he’s talking about and we all are sinners of such a fact when we rather buy, for instance, fakes than reals.
But in the other hand, as Susie says, we can’t do much when the prices are so high that we can’t even start paying a button. And I’m not speaking about Chalayan’s items; those are expensive to create and you clearly see why, and therefore expensive by themselves. I would be glad to pay high quantities for them and wouldn’t care. But we all know and have in mind some fashion houses whose prices sometimes are ridiculously expensive for no reason.
So maybe is all our, designers and consumers, responsibility to change this game; their responsibility making reasonable prices affordable to more people, and ours appreciating the effort and geniality and paying for that avoiding fakes just because they are cheaper. Maybe.
Bobble-bee is right. No-one buys it because no-one can afford it. If he wants more sales, the answer is simple – either drop the price or make more commercially viable clothes, which means compromise. He did a collaboration with Topshop back in 1998 and I bought a skirt from it (I might still have it somewhere) so perhaps he should do that again. The fact is, the majority of people with the money aren’t the type of people to buy labels like Chalayan (yes they appreciate the concept, the execution but just wouldn’t wear the clothes themselves. Wearable people like us is not wearable to the average 40-something editor). Fashion, like any other business, is a buyers market. Sad but true.
Funnily enough, my best ever bargain hunts happened with Chalayan: while at Saint Martins, I spotted a handwritten note of a sample sale of his degree collection at the pinboard outside the library. So I secured a Tyvek shirt for 10 and a black top with futurist metallic print for 60 pounds, respectively. While I was waiting for the guy to pack my hunts in a bin liner, a sale assistant whispered to me: ‘You’re lucky. That’s Hussein packing your buys’. ‘Yeah, right.’ ‘Yes, it’s true, I AM Hussein’. I took the bin liner and ran away in shame.
Last Summer I stumbled across a white, zip-fronted&sleeved jacket, down an estimated 90% from the original prize.
Though Chalayan’s clothes may be light years ahead in conceptual thought they’re at the same time fantastically cut and thus utterly wearable. To me they’re works of art. Which leaves me in two minds whether I should frame or wear them. Anyway, compared to an art investment, say a contemporary painting, even the regular Chalayan price tag comes cheap.
I love this guy
he is so real
he’s not some bullshit designer that talks about how, “oh i dont care about the money, all i care about is the art of fashion, and learning more about it.”
it also helps that his clothes are so incredible, it might help if he made an investment, like proenza schouler, in some low end line to make some money. Then he can continue in making even more amazing pieces. Not only that, we could also get affordable Chalayan designs (although they wouldn’t be as incredible as the ones shown on the runway).
aww, Susie the philanthropist is so adorable! I hope that someday you can help Chalayan.
Aw, this is an actual tug at the heart-strings.. and maybe you can’t help Chalayan right now, Susie, but I’m sure those lonely restaurant managers and neglected stall-owners do feel better after you’ve been through their wares.
Actually, anything lonely and neglected I have a soft spot for, whether it’s derelict and hardly-commented-on blog posts or streetside party mask sellers with incredibly tired faces.