Conceptual Resistance of Hussein Chalayan Within the Ephemeral World of Fashion

Abstract

Within the homogenized environment of global fashion system where the creativity and differentiation has almost been reduced in to forms and silhouettes and the clothing has been transformed in to a commodity, Hussein Chalayan has taken over the critical position of Martin Margiela being the pioneer of deconstructivism in fashion, through his controversial discourse and designs against consumer culture by the end of 1980s. Chalayan has put up a resistance against image-oriented approach of fashion industry through his conceptual attitude by deconstructing meaning of the clothes in order to re-semantify them and change their ontology. In order to construct the meaning Chalayan develops three different conceptual paths as; addressing to a social problem, a symbolic narration or a phenomenological event. In all of these paths the idea is the epicentre for his inter-disciplinary design process in which he does not draw any distinction between the world of clothes, objects, images and spatial environments. Within this chapter, Hussein Chalayan will be analysed as the designer who pioneered the radical and critical channel in the global fashion system, thus signed a new era in fashion history in terms of the possibilities of incubating a critical role through design discourse. © 2011 Inter-Disciplinary Press.