There was a period near the beginning of lockdown when an army of young London-based designers joined forces to combat the terrifying lack of PPE available to the UK’s hospital workers at the peak of the COVID-19 crisis.
It was those months which became the genesis for the Northern Irish designer’s new collection, a period when, even without a team or regular resources at his disposal, he had the luxury of time: the opportunity to rifle through deadstock materials and hand-dye them in his bathtub, or tie them with twine and run them through his washing machine to achieve the right crinkled effect. “Because my language is very much making, perhaps lockdown wasn’t so bad for me,” he notes.
DIY as it was, what manifested is one of Malone’s most aesthetically opulent collections yet: velvets, developed before lockdown with his fabric weavers in Tamil Nadu, India, dramatically draped into floor-sweeping Grecian numbers; discarded theater curtains cut into body-con glamour or gathered around padded bustles. “They’re fabrics that lend themselves to lounging—the velour is like Juicy Couture tracksuit material,” he smiles. “It’s comfortable; it’s loungewear.
The abundant historical allusions, too, were instinctual rather than referential. Without access to research libraries, “I was reliant on the guise of memory,” he says. “And I read a lot of books about time: Iain Reid, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Ali Smith… I was interested in the idea of how all these different time periods can somehow exist at once.
It is that sort of community that brands are likely to depend on in the coming season, as shopping for clothes without meaning remains a curious concept for many—and one far more likely to align with independent designers than giant conglomerates. “I’ve never wanted to work in the big fashion system, and I think what we’ve learned this year is that the one system doesn’t work for everyone; that different systems can work for different designers,” reflects Malone.
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