I have officially found my favourite new designer. I’d suspected it for a while, having fallen in love with a collection of his two seasons ago and generally being intrigued by anything associated with a certain virtuoso-pattern-cutter from way back when.
Avsh Alom Gur, one of the most exciting fresh talents around: creative director of the resurrected Ossie Clarke label and visionary in his own right.
This season, my suspicions were confirmed, as I was lucky enough to catch both of this maverick’s LFW shows.
Monday morning’s Ossie Clarke show roused me from my comatosed state with its wash of colours, fantasy and nostalgia. Lost weekends, the Ballets Russes and twilight mysticism all provided inspiration for this, the most accomplished Ossie collection to date.
It is clear that Avsh is a man of eccentricity and wild imagination – not dissimilar to his label’s namesake. For example, how many shades of red can you name? Scarlet, crimson, pillar-box… vermillion’s a fancy one. But try dragon’s blood, stiletto, beetroot or betelnut: all shades of the colour listed on the show’s press release. And I don’t even know what a betelnut is!
The Ossie Clarke collection was lovely enough but Avsh’s outing at the Vauxhall Fashion Scout on Tuesday showed off his creativity to its fullest.
Eastern European folk art and ‘the decadence of The King and I’ were the premise for an imagined party, ‘with guests resembling the mismatched wardrobe of a crazed society girl, drunk on a combination of heavy embroidery and showgirl sequins.’
And if the collection was a little schizophrenic, alternating between lavish tapestries of autumnal floral motifs and a powder pink, purple and black colour way, it was all part of this illustrative story.
Silhouettes harked back to the days of a ‘bygone era of opulent couture,’ with party dresses and ball gowns taken to extreme proportions, sweeping down the runway in a vast flurry of crinoline and netting.
Every now and again, outfits appeared emblazoned with the words ‘credit crunch.’ In any other instance the cynic in me might have found this a bit try-hard, but as I was enjoying the show so much I thought it was funny; in an ironic way of course.
This collection was clearly all about escapism and extravagance, and it did, for a good ten minutes or so, transport me somewhere far removed from the London grizzle outside. So thank you Avsh, for lighting up two dreary Fashion Week mornings and giving me a few things to hanker after when I win the lottery.
