AnOther – 13 Juin 2016<\/p>\n
Craig Green\u2019s Epic of Ascension
\nWe reflect on the boy scout sentimentality and remarkable finesse of the young London designer’s S\/S17 collection<\/p>\n
Text Olivia Singer
\nPhotography Dham Srifuengfung
\nPhotographic Editor Holly Hay<\/p>\n
It was only a couple of days before his S\/S17 show that Craig Green told me, \u201cWe haven\u2019t even put the looks together yet.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s kind of mad,\u201d he continued, \u201cit\u2019s still changing hour by hour.\u201d In fact, it wasn\u2019t until the day before the show that the structure of the collection finally took shape; fittings were still being done up until the last possible moment before the models took to the runway. If he wasn\u2019t so open about it all, you\u2019d never have guessed, simply because S\/S17 had a grace that you can hardly imagine was created quite so close to the mark. Over recent seasons, Green has become the darling of London Collections: Men, his nuanced subversions of masculinity \u2013 explored through collections that, when dissembled piece by piece, are remarkably wearable \u2013 has offered some much-needed elegance in a week that can often feel a bit higgledy-piggledy. This season saw his aesthetic achieve its greatest heights yet: a considered development on familiar signatures executed with a gentle finesse in both fabrication and form.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There were trousers cut to the knee, leaving their fabric to flap around the calves, sleeves loosely bound to jackets, scarves gently dangling from the hands of the models \u2013 even when hoods were pulled close around the face, they felt far from constricting but, rather, free. The outerwear was created to look \u201cas though it was a tent flying apart\u201d and sometimes backs were completely left bare and just laced with strings, because \u201cthere\u2019s something tortuous about wrapping someone in all that quilting in summer\u201d. While extending straps and half-undone stitching have become signatures of Green\u2019s, this time that looseness felt romantic rather than deliberately appearing rushed \u2013 and, with a single white flag of surrender providing the starting point for his inspirations, that serenity made sense both on initial impact and on closer inspection.<\/p>\n
An Accredited Confidence\u2028While last season\u2019s show was rife with ominous undertones\u00a0\u2013 sutured straitjackets and hazmat safety suits, padded coats constructed from punching bag leathers \u2013 this collection showed a graceful, almost monastic, surety. It can be no coincidence, then,\u00a0that\u00a0just last month Green won the BFC\/GQ Designer Menswear Fund: a prize that extends beyond endorsement and offers \u00a3150,000 investment alongside business mentorship. Green won\u2019t receive the funding until September, so \u201cthere\u2019s not a direct influence\u201d he says \u2013 but to ignore the confidence boost that must surely accompany such accreditation would be na\u00efve, and it\u00a0was transparently visible throughout the show. There was a quiet power in its gentle masculinity, a refined beauty to its thoughtfulness \u2013 and, while Green\u2019s clothes always seem self-assured, this time they were entirely without the underlying anxiety that can often colour them.<\/p>\n
An Exploration of Peace\u2028So, to the colours. While Green started out making his name through saturated palettes, last season\u2019s was subdued: silks hand-washed again and again until they felt exhausted. This time, too, the pieces were boil-bleached and re-dyed \u2013 but even when they were more vibrant they felt dusky and sentimental: North African bed sheets were love-worn and faded, turned into delicate patchworks for gentle jackets and relaxed trousers. Boyscout flags \u2013 first in reds and greens, later in peaches and mints \u2013 were bleached into \u201creally strange colours that you would never pick at first\u201d and draped around waists and torsos but, rather than constricting their models, they were carefully slung, completely harmonious.
\n\u201cI see [the collections] as one big story, and every season is a reaction to the one before,\u201d he said and, between the influence of flags and the exoticism of prints, Green\u2019s boys moved away from their A\/W16 armour and became explorers; they were a modern rendition of Captain John Noel\u2019s documentation of Mallory and Irvine in The Epic of Everest, paying nostalgic tribute to British mountaineers and schoolboyish scout escapades. With such mammoth investment for the business of a small designer soon to arrive, it felt as though, with this collection, Green was preparing to embark on a similarly epic adventure. For a man who last week told Tim Blanks that he\u2019d \u201cnever even heard of St Martins\u201d before he ended up there, whose shows have quickly become such a hot ticket and who has found himself with global stockists galore (he\u2019s now in 59 locations), you get the sense that he\u2019s set to reach the summit.<\/p>\n
A Score of Sentimentality\u2028Another distinct development in the collection was the score: surging and swelling with emotion and transforming the runway into something distinctly cinematic; you almost expected credits to roll during the finale. While, ordinarily, Green spends the night beforescrolling through YouTube for relevant tracks, this time\u00a0the music was composed by the legendary Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sanchez\u00a0\u2013 the man responsible for the auditory backdrops to the likes of Margiela and Marc Jacobs.\u00a0
\n\u201cI saw what he was doing three years ago and I felt very close to his world so I got in touch with him,\u201d Sanchez explained, \u201cI think he was surprised that I wanted to work with him, but I really like to work with people I feel I am close to in some way.\u201d The parity between the two \u2013 between the collection and the score \u2013 is interesting; once Green had sent Sanchez some references (pictures of fabrics, of boy scouts, of utility clothes), Sanchez started to search for what could work to accompany it, \u201csomething that felt familiar\u201d. He ended up mixing different versions of Roy Harper\u2019s Another Day, adding and subtracting layers of sound, fromKate Bush and Peter Gabriel, from Elizabeth Fraser, from Oliver Coates. \u201cI was washing the songs, like he was washing the clothes; I wanted to achieve this strange romanticism,\u201d he explains. Harper himself is determinedly Romantic (with a capital R), and so\u00a0there was a bizarre and powerful synchronicity with the Keatsian sentimentality of the collection, and its somewhat sublime narrative.
\n\u201cI saw the response to the show,\u201d says Sanchez afterwards. \u201cAnd people were touched. It doesn\u2019t happen like that all the time; I have seen that at some Prada shows, some Comme des Gar\u00e7ons shows, but it\u2019s not always like that. It was special.\u201d And special it was. \u201cWe are at a crucial stage where we\u2019re almost at the end of NewGen,\u201d Green reflected last week, \u201cand at the end of all of the amazing people who have supported us, doing stuff for next to nothing. Now it\u2019s time to build some foundations, and create a brand that is sustainable.\u201d You certainly get the feeling that he\u2019s well on his way to the top.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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