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Fashion Honors Zaha Hadid
Fashion Honors Zaha Hadid With ‘Extraordinary Process’ Exhibition
The architect Zaha Hadid, who died unexpectedly in March, was known for her
flamboyant and very personal fashion sense. While her architectural practice
become famous for large-scale, soaring structures, like the opera house in
Guangzhou, China, or the Maxxi museum in Rome, it has embraced fashion, jewelry
design and household items with a similar fervor and spirit of innovation. “In
terms of form, all our projects — architecture, fashion and furniture — interest
me equally,” Ms. Hadid said in a 2015 interview.
As Fashion Week started in London on Friday, an exhibition inspired by Ms.
Hadid’s interdisciplinary, experimental approach to design opened near the
catwalks and designer presentations, at Maison Mais Non, a gallery in Soho. In
“The Extraordinary Process,” nine designers — Patrik Schumacher, Ms. Hadid’s
partner at Zaha Hadid Architects; Peter Do; Phoebe English; Iris van Herpen;
Stephen Jones; Krystyna Kozhoma; Nasir Mazhar; Minimaforms and XO — consider how
fashion and design are affected by new technologies and collaborations.
“There was quite a simple brief for the designers,” said Lou Stoppard, the
curator of the exhibition, which also had guidance from the curator Hans Ulrich
Obrist. “What have you always wished your clothing could do? What demands and
expectations will we have of our clothing in the future? I think, at the moment,
we think of our clothes in an aesthetic way, as projecting what we want to say
about ourselves. Few of us have expectations that our clothing will protect us,
help us with daily routines, medicate us or act as digital forums. I was curious
to see what the designers would imagine.”
The exhibition evolved out of talks among Ms. Hadid, Mr. Schumacher and
Maison Mais Non that began some months before her death. Ms. Stoppard said that
some of the designers had been selected because of their connections to Ms.
Hadid, and others because they were invested in an innovative aspect of fashion
design.
“I was interested in working with designers who weren’t thought of as making
‘futuristic’ fashion,” Ms. Stoppard said. “I wanted ideas, propositions,
musings. It’s purely speculative; no one really has any idea what we’ll be
wearing in the future.”
The results of those speculations are wildly different. Six of the designers
whose work is on display at “The Extraordinary Process” talked to The New York
Times about their process, Ms. Hadid’s influence and what the fashion future
might hold.
Here are edited extracts from the conversations.
Patrik Schumacher
I teach at the design lab at the Architectural Association, and we have been
working on texture-like materials to use in construction. But in our
architectural designs, we have done origami-style curved folding. It’s a world
of forms, more than anything, and then you seek customization. For the
exhibition, I’ve designed a three-piece suit using neoprene and mesh because I
want that elasticity and comfort. Instead of buttons, there are zippers, and the
way the suit is constructed and layered is unconventional. At the same time, it
is still recognizably a suit, elegant and very wearable, and you could go
jogging after dinner without changing.
Krystyna Kozhoma
I saw a video about curved folding in architecture, and it inspired me to
create clothes with programmed shapes. So I’ve embedded clear bars in the fabric
of a jacket and trousers to create a structured shape. I worked with an
engineer, and there was no pattern cutting; the clothes were made by a computer
program. That’s still limited in fashion and mostly used for 3-D printing. This
is a translation from architecture to fashion, and the shapes and fluidity of
the lines show how much my work is inspired by Zaha. She took a lot of
inspiration from nature but then computerized it. What’s interesting is that if
the embedded material reacted to light, or temperature, you could make the
garment a smart one. That’s the next project.
Iris van Herpen
I’m showing a dress from my Lucid collection that is built of thousands of
small transparent pieces. They create a bubble or halo around the body, and
around the dress we have built an installation of optical light feeds from thin,
transparent sheets that bend the light. From each angle, you see the garment in
a different perspective and with a sense of movement. For me, that reflects the
future: uncertain and personal to each individual. I think Zaha’s work is a
beautiful balance between the futuristic and the organic, and I tried to stay
true to that balance.
Peter Do
I was thinking about minimizing one’s wardrobe and functionality, so I used a
single yarn, made from cellophane, woven in many different ways, and made a
unisex coat, sweaters and boots. Each looks different because of the way it is
fabricated and layered. I worked with Stoll, a knitwear company in New York who
make incredible knitting machines that can do extraordinary things. In the
future, I think they’ll be much more simple to use, and I had this idea that
everyone could have a Stoll machine at home, download your patterns, choose your
yarns and your garment would be knitted by the time you got home from work.
Phoebe English
I realized, when I got the brief, that I felt a bit frightened of the future.
So I designed an enclosure or private space, a kind of safety shell. It’s
constructed from a heavily smocked textile with very closely packed pleating.
It’s half calico and half plastic, so it has both a rawness and a sheen. I’ve
always admired the shapes and forms of Zaha’s work; there is something about
that fluid line that I feel has a strong feminine aesthetic. That has been a big
influence on me. When people envisage future design, it often looks hard and
polished and technological. I wanted something with a different vision.
Stephen Jones
Zaha was a client of mine, and I felt we had a similar approach. She made
forms, constructions which relate to people, and I do the same thing as a
milliner, but put them on people’s heads. She once gave me a sketch of a vortex
that she had used as a design element in a restaurant in Sapporo, and I took
that as my inspiration. My tribute to her is a red, spinning vortex hat over a
stool she designed and a cushion made from the Issey Miyake pleated fabric she
always wore. For me, it’s an idea of energy, speed and transformation. I love
the idea that in the future you’ll put a magical hat on, and it will make you
feel a certain way.
