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There was a time when high fashion was an elitist pursuit. Behind closed and gilded doors, the world's most gifted creators unveiled their twice-yearly collections and the limited press in attendance used any imagery that sprang from their presentations in only the most strictly controlled manner. Opportunistic copycats - and even way back when, they infiltrated such hallowed portals - were unlikely to be invited twice unless they were prepared to pay through the nose for the privilege. Now, though, even some of the most rarefied fashion is understood by anyone with even a passing interest in aesthetics. And that is a good thing. The democratisation of design has made the world a better place to be.
With this in mind, while we may not all be prepared to invest thousands of dollars on a single garment, we are, for the most part, aware of the iconography generated on the catwalks and beamed across the world within seconds of its first airing - or, not unusually, live. Jean Paul Gaultier's conical bra, for example, is as well known to even marginally inquisitive eyes as, say, Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans. And while Hussein Chalayan may not as yet be a household name, he is the mind behind some of the most thrilling fashion happenings of the past 15 years. If many have still not heard of this designer, they may well be familiar with his most famous creation: a tiered skirt made out of nothing more immediately wearer-friendly than polished wood.
When, for the finale of his autumn/winter 2000 collection Chalayan instructed the Russian model Natalia Semanova to step into the centre of a circular coffee table that, until that point, had been part of a stage set, and pull it up around her waist and walk, anyone present knew that they were witnessing what is known as a "fashion moment". Furniture transforming itself into clothing in front of one's very eyes was a fashion first.
"The number of times I've seen that bloody table skirt," he says, over coffee. "I mean, I love that piece, but it's only the tiniest part of what we've done. If you have to feature it, feature it small, please. OK, it's amazing but I'm sick of the sight of it. People think that creativity and commerce don't go together in my brand, but that's a misconception because we have always - always - made clothes that you can wear.
"I think sometimes that those iconic images can be more of a hindrance than a help. The important thing is to feature the duality. It's not about one thing or the other; otherwise I wouldn't have a business. Often, the B-side of a record is the best."
It may be a source of irritation - and, it should be pointed out, good-humoured irritation - for Chalayan, that over the next few months, the item in question is likely to become better known than ever, with the designer's new exhibition on at London's Design Museum.
If anyone's work is suited to a museum, it is Chalayan's. Since he first came to public attention in the mid-1990s, his output has been considerably more ambitious than most. Home furnishings morphing effortlessly into garments is merely the tip of the iceberg for the Turkish Cypriot-born designer who has been brave enough to explore both convent girl and covered Muslim; who has created clothing sprouting nothing more obviously appealing than internal body parts - cut out of fabric as opposed to anything visceral, thankfully- and whose work has dwelt on subject matter as diverse as mortality and climate change. Chalayan has suspended feather-light garments from helium balloons, crafted a dress out of fibreglass, which mimicked the wings of an aircraft in motion at the mere push of a button, and another with intricate seaming that echoed flight paths.
More recently, a single outfit metamorphosed from Victorian crinoline to 1920s flapper dress and silver Space Age shift thanks to complex mechanisms built into its underpinning; another exuded a dazzling halo of dancing light, a result of laser technology, again embedded in its fragile and unfathomable structure. Not content with restricting himself to the creation of fashion, meanwhile, Chalayan's art projects have included a series of short films: Temporal Meditations, Place to Passage and Anaesthetics. In 2005, he represented Turkey at the 51st Venice Biennale with Absent Presence, featuring Tilda Swinton.
"You might say I'm an artistic designer, I suppose," he concedes. "So what? I'm definitely an ideas person. But I've never been interested in labels. They're only there to make it easier for people to understand someone's output."
The only child of Turkish- Cypriot parents, Hussein Chalayan was born in Nicosia in 1970. He was interested in clothes from an early age. "I wasn't trendy or anything," he's quick to point out, as if that might be uncouth. "But I always liked to wear different colours to other people, to wear my hair in a different way." A respect for individuality, for difference, was part of his make-up then, as now, it seems. "I'm quite highly strung," he says. "I can't sit in a meeting for too long, for example. I have to walk around. Or at least stand up. I have to apologise because, well, it is rather odd, isn't it?"
He was, he remembers, an introverted child. "I spent a lot of time in Cyprus on my own, but there were always things I had a real passion for. I used to love building things, creating environments was such a big thing for me. And Cyprus, you know, is a Mediterranean island so it's very colourful. It's also a divided island, and I was fascinated by that.
"We could see the border culture, and you grow up with a curiosity for what's going on on the other side, but you can't actually see it."
He says that the mentality that arises from island culture still informs his work today.
"I think that my curiosity has been my big drive. When you come from an island, there's an emphasis on wanting to explore because you're isolated. And that, coupled with any natural curiosity, is a fantastic recipe for an adventurous mind."
Aged 12, and following the separation of his parents, the designer travelled to the UK with his father, a restaurateur, and still based there. It is the female members of his family, however, that always attract the most open expressions of warmth. He once described his mother to me as "the sweetest of mothers". His maternal grandmother is "poetic, she used to call me in song, we loved each other, it was a love affair. I have always been interested in women. I love women. My mother, growing up where she did, had so few opportunities, and that made me ambitious. I always wanted to make the best out of any talent or any passion I might have."
In London, Chalayan went to a private school and then eventually on to the fashion degree course at Central Saint Martins. These were halcyon days for the celebrated art college. Alexander McQueen was the name to watch on the MA course. Katie Grand was soon to arrive and co-found the style magazine Dazed & Confused. "I sat next to Hussein," says Giles Deacon. "We had a whale of a time. People think he's going to be this super-serious person, but he's got this really funny, gorgeous personality about him."
"People always say I'm serious," Chalayan confirms, "but that's so not true. I don't take myself seriously as a person at all."
He pauses for thought before adding: "I suppose I can be very arrogant and hard-headed, but I try to be arrogant for the right reasons, if you like. And I do take my work extremely seriously."
This has manifested itself from the start in the way Chalayan is motivated almost to the point of obsession. It is the stuff of fashion folklore that, in 1993, the designer buried his degree collection in a back garden to discover how it would decompose. That did not stop Joan Burstein, owner of London boutique Browns, from taking it in its entirety and installing it in her shop window, just as she'd done for John Galliano almost a decade before. In fact, the career trajectories of these two designers are not dissimilar. Chalayan rose to prominence at a time when designer fashion was characterised by a buying spree on the part of luxury-goods conglomerates including France's LVMH and Italy's Gucci Group; anyone attempting to remain independent did so at their peril. A fledgling designer - even one as feted as Chalayan - could never hope to rival the advertising budgets and infrastructure of those corporate superpowers.
Chalayan, along with his contemporary, the more obviously media-friendly McQueen, began to attract an international following to London Fashion Week that was unprecedented, and yet he struggled financially, just as Galliano had before him. The older designer was at Dior by that time - he remains there to this day, and the parent company LVMH supports his signature line. McQueen moved to Givenchy - he is now in partnership with Gucci Group as is, following a stint at Chloe, Stella McCartney.
In 1998, Chalayan was appointed design director of TSE New York, remaining at the helm for two years. In 2001, he became creative director of Asprey for three years, launching a quietly beautiful clothing collection for the jeweller. "It was a very difficult project," he says of the latter. "Very enjoyable, too. It taught me - as did my previous experience with TSE - about luxury product." What it failed to generate, however, was long-term backing for his own label, which has always eluded him. Until now.
In February last year, with the Paris collections in full flow, a press conference announced his appointment as creative director of clothing for the German sportswear brand Puma, of which more than 60 per cent is owned by PPR (Pinault Printemps La Redoute), a rival of LVMH. Chalayan's first designs for the company will go on sale in the autumn of this year. In return for his expertise, Puma has become a majority stakeholder in Chalayan's own company and is title sponsor of the forthcoming Design Museum show.
"Hussein Chalayan is not only hugely creative but also has an incredible passion for fabric and technology," says Puma's CEO, Jochen Zeitz. "For that reason, we have a mutual understanding of one another. Only very few designers have managed to create a business on their own without being part of a big fashion conglomerate, and he is done that. But he is now come to the point, I think, where he wants to take the next step."
Puma's relationship with PPR means that Chalayan benefits from the infrastructure of the Gucci Group - the same Italian factories that produce, of course, Gucci but also McQueen, McCartney, Yves Saint Laurent and more, are now responsible for Chalayan's collections, too.
To label Hussein Chalayan a "conceptual designer" would be to underestimate the importance he attaches to the fact that his clothes come to life when they are worn. "It's exciting to see the clothes being worn because then it becomes real," he explains. "I always think of the idea first, then about how I am going to represent it with clothes. I guess that makes me a conceptual designer in a way, although that is such a cliche these days. You're conceptual, you're avant-garde, whatever. The story behind a collection is only important as a vehicle through which I can become interested and inspired. At the end of the day, I don't want someone to buy a garment because they know the story behind it, but because it fits them, because they like the way it looks. I actually spend most of my time working towards that, looking at the lines of the body, at how to fit, at fabric. The concept is only the beginning. From thereon in, it's really all about technique."
Chalayan's clothes are often grouped with the more radical designers and are determinedly - exceptionally - modern.
However, if there is a single thing that unifies Hussein Chalayan's work, it is that it is cross-disciplinary.
"Yes, my work references art, architecture, politics, technology, science, nature and philosophy, up to a point," he says.
"My quest, in a way, is to identify the connections between different entities. In the end, though, it's important to remember that it's still fashion, and if it wasn't, I wouldn't be having this exhibition. What's interesting to me is the merging of all those different worlds."
- INDEPENDENT
