Craig Green’s Day of the Dead

Egyptian pharaohs, Mexican embalming, weekend sailors, YouTube mystery videos, human musculature and even a reborn Lazarus all contributed to the latest collection from Craig Green - the most inventive menswear designer in Britain today.

That said, his key inspiration was, in the end, the mirror.

“Thinking about how people use mirrors to change their look and their space. Making rooms bigger and brighter, and about how we all scrutinize ourselves,” explained Green.

Hence, he made this season’s runway into a giant extended mirror, over which marched his latest gang of global travellers. Several looks featured reflective material, though it was hard to know which culture, if any, they were referencing.

“When I sent photos to friends asking what these ideas reminded them of, they all came back with different responses: from Turkish mirrors to Indian temples,” laughed Green, the triple-winning British Menswear Designer.

Staged deep in the bowels of Billingsgate Market, the show included a series of hyper bright ensembles – made of nylon sailing fabrics from dinghies. They were laser-cut like guipure lace, in patterns influenced by Mexican burial shrouds; suitable looks for the eye-catching peripatetic wanderer who is Green’s audience.

Every so often Green went into overdrive, with bizarre prints featuring elements of human musculature or extended leather overalls with multiple flaps.

In other seasons, the designer has added tent like structures to his clothes. This season he restricted himself to a few wooden and metallic crucifixes used as necklaces or even a handbag, while Lazarus’ resurrection was hinted at with star burst silk combinations.

He also played on his signature stone-washed computer graphic coats, and riffed on his matelassé jerkins, which this season looked like flexible tatami mats; adding that oddly spiritual sense to this latest collection by Green -- menswear’s most original thinker.

Craig Green’s Day of the Dead

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