Packaging the Body at Craig Green
\nBy TIM BLANKS
\nJanuary 20, 2020<\/p>\n
PARIS, France \u2014 This show was the last in a triptych for Craig Green. He defined its theme as \u201cpackaging the body\u201d but the previous two stages had already done something similar. Autumn\/Winter 2019 focused on plastic. Spring\/Summer 2020 was all about the primal power of skin. The stuff that ruled this closing segment was rubber. What they had in common was the notion of protection. That has been at the heart of Green\u2019s menswear since the very beginning. In his world, men have been vulnerable, fragile, on the brink of shattering, even. They have needed succour and shelter. Green\u2019s designs have offered both, in extraordinary, defiant reconceptualisations of the very basics of menswear.
\nThat all came to a head on Sunday afternoon with a transcendent finale, bodies packaged in a cascade of colour, veiled behind what looked like slatted blinds, the latest expression of the signature body sculptures with which Green has altered the space around the human form. They were so magical that they made me think of Shakespeare: \u201cHow beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in\u2019t.\u201d No eyerolls please: Craig Green can drive a guy to such grandiose flights of fancy.
\nWhat loaned the clothes added weight was the depth of thought that went into them. Maybe it\u2019s going too far to colour this collection as a meditation on male mental health issues, but listening to Green\u2019s clarification of his \u201cpackaging the body\u201d theme, some very clear subtexts emerged. A long cashmere shift seemed luxurious enough, except it was lined in the kind of waterproof material used to protect mattresses from habitual bedwetters. \u201cIt is protected from you as much as you are restricted from feeling it,\u201d said Green. He considered this a comment on human relationships. Likewise those blinds in the finale. Windows made him think about looking out while other people are looking in: two-way voyeurism. Detachment. People falling in love online without ever actually meeting each other. Touching someone with gloves on, so you don\u2019t really feel them. \u201cYou put up barriers as you age, to stop you connecting with people,\u201d Green mused. It was a curious observation, in light of a collection that was entrenched in tactility.
\nThe most packaged looks here were quivering nets of rubber, the kind you see wrapped round fruit in Japanese supermarkets. \u201cIt\u2019s the mesh they use to stop bleeding, like tourniquets,\u201d the designer explained. \u201cIt\u2019s used in slingshots too.\u201d The rubber was hand-dyed, a bizarre combination of industry and artisan. For Green, the idea of elasticity was essential: the concertina effect of stretching and unfolding, like a blind, represented growing up for him. You\u2019re handed an outfit at birth, you unfold it, adapt it, and as you grow, you wear the imprints of the past. He\u2019d wanted to do that last season, imprint pictograms into the models\u2019 flesh.
\nSuch a pagan notion hints at the breadth of Green\u2019s ambition. It spans millennia. Latex is a futuristic material but Green smocked it, to look like a medieval ruff. Neo- medievalism: it\u2019s a thing! The ripstock that you\u2019d usually find in a boat\u2019s sail was turned into leather-look suiting. That trick of the eye was Green\u2019s droll way of saying that sometimes the packaging is more important than what\u2019s inside.<\/p>\n
His theme \u2014 essentially, human being as commodity \u2014 is hugely topical in our Orwellian era of wanton data harvesting. Dystopia beckons. But it always has in a Craig Green collection. Optimism is locked into a photo-finish with despair, and I honestly couldn\u2019t tell you which one will emerge the victor, especially given that Green\u2019s own commentary casts such a shadow. But, on Sunday, the detail of his designs, the intricate ingenuity of the seaming, the marriage of art and function were an entirely joyous glorying in creation, with the assistance of a remarkable soundtrack by Frederic Sanchez that matched every nuance of the collection with a corresponding aural surge. Green said that he wanted his Paris debut to feel like a positive new energy. As the best of all possible worlds, it did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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