Meadham Kirchhoff Fall 2012
Edward Meadham, along with his pastel-pink marabou jacket, lace-trimmed shorts, plastic daisy necklace, and glitter heels, is the type of designer a stranger might take for a dedicated club kid. Wrong. “I never exit,” he says matter-of-factly. “But i love imagining what it would’ve been wish to visit those clubs in London within the early eighties, like Taboo and Kinky Gerlinky, where everyone dressed up and made themselves into something different every night. All of it appeared like such fun-all that virtually obscene glamour.” Thus the show he wear along with his partner Benjamin Kirchhoff, was a mash-up of “vicarious” influences, of glam rock and disco, in addition to quotes from the best way their young East End designer and Central Saint Martins friends dress, with one more-color hair and new hairdo each week, madly painted nails, and multicolored makeup and jewellery concocted from anything that glitters. You spot them round the London shows-post-crash kids thrown on their lonesome creativity and childlike exuberance to cobble something together out of a no-money, student-loan lifestyle.
Meadham Kirchhoff’s party monsters, in the event that they save up, will now literally have hairy monster–face fake furs, rainbow-sequined suits, David Bowie lamé jackets, and Brian Eno–Roxy Music–era gold-and-silver-tinsel chubbies to choose between. Weirdly, there’s even plenty here that would chime with the teenage memories of mothers and daughters alike-that innocent early-seventies moment when young girls first customized their jeans with sew-on patches, or wear stripy tights with hot pants and clunky glittery platforms to clomp off to bounce to the Osmonds on the local youth club.
What both eras have in common, after all , is a bleak economic backdrop within which unemployment figures offer youngsters little hope for the longer term. Yet the optimism of youngster, irrespective of how hard things seem, can never really be repressed. Meadham Kirchhoff speaks up for that independent, uncrushed, unserious streak of self-expression. It doesn’t matter what happens, kids will always find their very own technique to have a good time. Just on the grounds that was a cheering thanks to end a contented London Fashion Week.
