BEAUTY: Clothing--Craig Green

Craig Green has been absent for several years, on purpose. Although he has not had a live show in a awhile, he has still been creating and showing collections via special presentations and lookbooks. So this season, Green returned to a catwalk show with a deeply personally collection at his own studio in Silvertown, an ex-industrial area far out in London’s docklands.

Green lost his father last year. "Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationships between sons and fathers and that kind of dual expectation you have. It’s kind of about that tension," he said. Now, Green's oeuvre for the last ten years has really been about exploring masculinity and the ways the current incarnation of masculinity limits and oppresses men (see previous posts here). But the way he translates his concepts, thoughts, and beliefs into shapes, colors, and textures is really an exercise in restraint. His early collections featured garments that had the sense of martial arts uniforms, but coming undone with yards and yards of tape strapping dangling and flapping from sleeves and hems. He began incorporating fantastical wearable sculptures that seemed like protective shields constructed of scrap wood, or box kite frames strapped to the models as though they were backpacks.

So for this Spring Summer '25 collection (which was not shown as part of the official London Fashion Week schedule) about fathers and sons, Green takes his usual minimalist approach but with some fascinating details. I quite like the stacking of men's traditional leather belts, the kind that "dads" wear, into a kind of reinforced corset. And the deconstruction, mixing, and blending of shooting patches, protective patches, and sports gear applied to the body of a motorcycle jacket is, as Green put it, based on "functions that are quite dark." All functions tinged with physical violence. But how to explain the shift into plaid bibs featuring simplified children's storybook versions of bulldozers, fire engines, and dump trucks? Followed by an unexpected range of sheer pieces that could be pajamas? The show closed with dress-like ponchos with long swinging fringe. This could all be the aforementioned tension between father and son. And perhaps Green is saying that masculinity would do well to remember a sense of innocence and child-like sweetness. I think the world would be quite thankful and relieved if that happened...

https://craig-green.com/