Trousers from When Football Hooligans Become Hindu Gods (2006) (image: Neil Bedford, © Aitor Throup) |
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Three pairs of trousers make up Aitor Throup’s new collection, launched in Paris in January. And rather than on the catwalk, he showed this mini collection at Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard in the Marais district. The new styles – Trumpet, Calf Pocket and Anatomy, all made from worsted wool – formed part of an exhibition titled Legs, which also showed 20 styles of trouser from Throup’s old collections. Each of the three designs has a unique characteristic influenced by Throup’s utilitarian approach to clothing design. They feature leather-soled footguards that can be stowed away neatly against the ankle, pockets on the calves and a section of ribbed fabric around the knee. The trousers were displayed on mesh mannequins, hung from the ceiling, making for a dramatic installation and bringing them up to eye level to make it easier to examine the detail. “The exhibition is celebrating trousers, elevating them from commodities to objets d’art,” says Throup. The London-based designer, profiled in icon 077, has been looking for a way to navigate the fashion industry on his own terms and now thinks he has found it. “The Japanese fashion system has an intriguing link to continuity and product, not just fashion, and that led to this idea of having a product line that combines avant-garde fashion with a very strict continuous aesthetic,” he says. Legs is the starting point of this new concept, which involves building up an ideas archive based on Throup’s narrative collections such as When Football Hooligans Become Hindu Gods (2006). Elements of these highly conceptual collections are then transferred to the Aitor Throup product line. This means that Throup doesn’t have to aimlessly reinvent himself every season, as most fashion brands currently do. The white mannequins model the new styles (image: Neil Bedford, © Aitor Throup) |
Words Johanna Agerman |
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Trousers from the Funeral of New Orleans (2007) (image: Neil Bedford, © Aitor Throup) |