Sending out an S.o.S.

If you think about our world nowadays and how we’re living and how we’re acting and if you think about our history and how it is repeating itself in the most obvious and horrible manner, it is something to really take seriously and talk about.  I know this sounds very dramatic but I find fashion especially a place where we need to talk about these things because fashion is a global language.  We all speak it more and more.  Less and less people read the news, less and less people are taking alarming news seriously.  In this language and this culture we are all so global and globalised and we’re all so well educated we need to start talking about these things in our time where we actually are and not just see it through a video screen and that’s something I want to do in my way.

Wali Mohammed Barrech, a designer with a mouthful of a name also talked up a mouthful after his tension-strung S/S 15 show held in a car park during Copenhagen Fashion Week two days ago.  It wasn’t just backstage post-show waffle though.  Barrech’s Facebook page is dotted with current affairs concerns – namely the crisis in Gaza – events that are shocking in the extreme, but for most of us, our participation is merely restricted to watching it on the news, reading stories online and retweeting/FB-ing links accompanied by a sad-faced emoji.  Barrech wants to use his collections as a form of dialogue to reflect the world we live in and S/S 15 was an S.O.S. cry for caution on all fronts.  We’re being watched everywhere and our privacy is constantly at risk, hence the surveillance printed imagery on unitards, where cars are seen from an aerial view just as Google street view will one day probably be a 24 hour live camera stream.  We need to be rescued from ourselves and the actions of others, hence the primary hued jackets equipped with elements derived from rescue and survival gear.  The majority of the models were deliberately blonde and tanned.  Barrech, as a Pakistani-born, Croatian-raised designer living in Denmark perhaps was probing into matters of racial supremacy, which ignore as we might, still lingers in strands all over the world.  The words S.S. emblazoned on nylon packaway jackets sends a shiver down your spine at first glance but look again and there’s a tiny “o” in the middle.  It’s an S.o.S. call that is meant to instill fear.  Barrech wanted to establish a sense of alarm at the show and so mid-way through, the lights in the already dim  city car park went out as we watched shadow-y figures stomping about, catching flashes of those S.o.S. and not much more.  Then a Toyota Yaris suddenly swerved in and parked itself in the middle of the runway.  An overhead sprinkler came on and smoky gas tore through.  For different people that danger-filled environment will evoke different things.  I was taken back to 7/7 in London when not too far behind me, the number 30 bus had exploded near Tavistock Square and the air was thick with smoke and an acrid smell.   Most of us are cocooned and safe in our living rooms and on our laptops consuming news from afar.  We can’t even begin to imagine what a bombed-out war scene could even be like.  Barrech’s show pulsed through a difficult subject matter to make us think but moreover maintains a strand of fashion that increasingly, more and more people shy away from – fashion as a medium that can probe and disturb.

Barrech is seeking to join an impressive pantheon of designers who have done this in the past – Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Rei Kawakubo, Vivienne Westwood to name but a few.  And there’s no getting away from the shades of Raf that can be seen in Barrech’s work.  But what was commendable was the fact that he tried and suceeded, for the most part to combine the aesthetically pleasing with pertinent messaging.  At the end of the day, the main takeaway for most people, who didn’t get to hear Barrech speak about the collection after the show, will be “Wow, cool show.” or “I want those shoes.”  Is that the ideal end conclusion?  Perhaps not.  But what Barrech is critiquing can’t be remedied with one singular fashion show.  We will still be in our safe and comforting shells, passively retweeting and observing.  Engaging in this way and being aware is the most we can do for now.  Barrech’s S.o.S. at the very least is trying to thrust the conversation in your face.