Take a Seat and Discover What Made Hussein Chalayan’s Fall 2000 Show the Best Ever

[Hamish] When we were in the studio,

I said to Hussein,

what is this furniture doing in here?.

And he went, that's a dress.

And I said, get out of here.

[Hussein] I'm Hussein Chalayan,

and this is my autumn/winter 2000 collectsion

called After Words.

[dance music]

[Hamish] I remember Anna Wintour

coming to the London shows one season,

and she said, who should I be seeing

of the young designers?.

And on the list was Hussein Chalayan.

From the beginning,

this was clearly a very singular voice:

very, very unique perspective.

Hussein's Turkish Cypriot

and he grew up with a lot of violence

and an impending sense of dystopia.

That was also woven into the fabric of his clothes

in this really fascinating, compelling way.

[Hussein] In Cyprus, there was the inter-communal war

that started in the sixties.

And I remember asking my mother, like,

what would be the first thing

you would want to take with you

when you know that your neighborhood will be raided?.

And she said to me,

it will be my old photographs,

it would be a blanket,

and maybe my favorite clothes.

And then that was something that stayed with me,

but I wanted to turn this kind of,

let's say, horrific situation into a performance.

[woman vocalizing]

The show starts off with a family that's sitting down.

And then I just wanted the family to be there

because this can happen to any family.

[Hamish] Again, this was very autobiographical,

and I think there was a sense,

a remembered childhood moment

when there was a threat of imminent attack.

[Eugene] At the beginning of the show,

there was this real family of people.

They weren't models.

Well, I just need them to look real.

We literally,

we just left them

and kept them as real as possible.

[Hamish] You know, the show opened

and you had this room set

with sixties, artsy, suburbia furniture.

[Hussein] People probably thought

it was just, kind of, decoration

or it was just there as an idea.

But actually,

that eventually those objects would be something

that the models would engage with.

[Alexandre] I proposed to Hussein

to design a language for his fashion shows onward.

I proposed that the music would be always directed by,

of course, inspiration of his collectsion.

[Hussein] That [unclear] Bulgarian folk singers.

[Bulgarian folk music]

Very haunting, kind of acapella sounds

that these women were producing,

which already, of course, set the scene

in this rather dramatic way.

[Hussein] Then it will start with this line

that continued throughout the layers.

I wanted to look at how you can create this optic effect

with depth and the line at the same time

[Laird] With the use of piping,

and volume, and pleating,

he creates a surrealist and more of a luminous take.

[Hamish] Dresses that were sort of deceptively simple,

but actually were constructed with all these kinds of folds

and integral pleats,

almost like origami

or like you're making a child's airplane

out of folded newspaper.

[Eugene] When I saw the collectsion,

I saw some really, very strong shapes

and I kind of saw this idea

that was a two dimensional shape becoming three dimensional.

And that was my source of inspiration for the hair

for the Hussein show.

[Hussein] And the makeup was also quite remarkable,

were these kind of clear shaped plastic add-ons.

And I think this idea really came from making them look

a bit more East European

and the makeup was done by Pat McGrath.

[Hamish] There was this amazing sculptural dress

that seemed to have been carved

from very, very tightly gathered tulle.

Was this wonderful silhouette

that looked almost like clipped topiary.

[Erika] It's like wearing a feather,

but it was also very big.

So I remember that I had a little bit of a problem

relaxing my arms,

'cause I didn't know where to put them.

[Eugene] When I saw the blue dress in the collectsion,

I remember seeing it, just thinking

that's really exquisite

and I've never, ever seen anything like that before.

This idea kind of fell into place

that what I wanted to do

was I wanted to have this texture in the hair

and just kind of carve these two dimensional

and three dimensional shapes into it.

[Laird] This is a look that goes into a museum,

is exhibited,

is talked about,

is remembered.

And look at the look next to it,

is something that you can wear.

So, it's even more admirable

that he can apply his skills to things

that are extreme

and to make something special out of something

that's ordinary, like a shift dress.

[Hussein] And then these gloves,

which are part of the garments themselves,

that are actually pockets at the same time.

They came as sheepskin coats.

[Alexandre] Devon could give a different allure

and meaning to any creative idea.

Gimmicky, she would take the gimmick off.

She would add the edge on.

[Hussein] So the whole idea behind this collectsion

and show was about displacement.

But I can't rationalize every single thing for you

in such a way that is connected to the main theme,

because it's more of a feeling you create.

But you have to stick to the language of clothes as well,

that you've developed.

So you combine the ambiance

of what you're trying to do

with your language of clothing.

These three black dresses are supposed to be

the bad omen in a way.

They're like, kind of, almost three black birds.

So actually, it was supposed to be the omen

before the Exodus, so to speak.

[Hamish] At the end of the show,

four girls came on

this sort of suburban splay leg chairs that we had seen.

It had gray slip covers.

They started turning the slip covers inside out

and unzipping elements of them.

And you realize that actually,

these slip covers

that had been perfectly tailored to fit

these very geometric chairs,

were dresses.

[Hussein] It was quite technical.

Of course, the clothes that were hidden as chair covers,

that was a very long process of trial and error

because whatever fits the body

wouldn't fit the chair automatically.

So you have to go back and forth

until it was right.

I remember it being quite challenging,

but also very satisfying.

[Erika] In a matter of, I don't know, the 30 seconds,

we had turned our whole living room

into ways that we can take it with us.

[Hamish] And through, you know,

these kind of fascinating devices

of panels that fold and unbuttoned,

and then buttoned up,

and ended up with these

four amazingly chic dresses

that had come out of four slip covers.

And it was really electrifying.

I think there was a kind of moment of spontaneous applause

in the audience.

[crowd applauds]

You must remember that this was a period

when people were sitting there with their notebooks

and pencils and not distracted

by trying to capture the moment on their iPhones.

So, their hands were freed up to applaud.

That would have been a sensational finale in itself.

And then Natalia Semanova came in

and she was wearing a gray skirt

and an asymmetric bodice.

And she lifted out a central circular panel

right in the middle of the coffee table.

And she gingerly stepped inside the coffee table.

Which was just about,

the opening was just about wide enough

to contain her narrow skirts and legs,

and that she'd pulled them up

and they unfurled

to create this kind of extraordinary,

sculptural, A-line, wooden [unclear].

It was certainly unlike any other garment

I'd ever seen on a runway.

[Hussein] I think the biggest trick here was the weight.

The model had to be able to lift it up

and you had to be able to walk in it.

And the other trick was the legs

had to flip up.

They were a spring loaded.

So, as soon as the model picked it up,

they just flipped back in.

I really thought so many things could go wrong

during the show

because the models maybe wouldn't get the process right.

But luckily, everything went as planned.

[Erika] That was a complete surprise to us, as well.

We weren't told much

and I think that was for a reason.

[Eugene] That was real mind blowing.

I know that no one was actually expecting

something like that to happen.

And that was always something

that Hussein really loved.

[Alexandre] We helped make possible,

dreaming of a show in a different format.

[Eugene] It was about immersing yourself

in this experience

and allowing yourself the time to dream

and be taken to a place that you'd never been to before.

[Hussein] Somehow the show got more appreciated,

in time.

For fashion, what it's done is that it shows

that you can challenge the board of the fashion,

I guess.

This show definitely contributed

to how fashion can be pursued and perceived.

[crowd applauds]

[dance music]