Meadham Kirchhoff (Q3352)
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Meadham Kirchhoff is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Meadham Kirchhoff |
Meadham Kirchhoff is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
The invitation to this season's Meadham Kirchhoff show came with a note scrawled on the back: "Reject everything!" That turned out to be an accurate, if not entirely complete, précis of the show to come. After several buoyant seasons in a row, all of them filled with buyable things, Ben Kirchhoff and Ed Meadham decided it was time again to rage against the machine. This collection was punk—not just in its slashed tees and seemingly scavenged materials, but also in its no-holds-barred renegade attitude. It was there in the clothes: the sliced-up latex, the oversize jackets that looked like they'd been made from dirty towels, the bullet-tit knits, the sheet white dresses with dangling red string, which had unavoidable menstrual connotations given the "blood"-dipped tampons that were part of the show's decor.The collection defied you to find it beautiful, and yet…it was. There was beauty in the Meadham Kirchhoff signature chiffon dresses, here scrunched up as if in anger and worn in ersatz ways. There was beauty in the eyelash-trimmed jackets made from the kind of shiny material used in recycling bags. And there was beauty of a particularly sales-friendly sort in the collection's deconstructed patchwork shirting, like the short shirtdress pinned askew and skirted in asymmetric pleats. Meadham and Kirchhoff were explicitly rejecting commodification this season; the collection was meant to be alienating. But you didn't have to work too hard to spot things women (and men, who modeled some clothes) would spend cold, hard cash on, such as the articulated bombers in a squishy fabric normally used as automotive padding. Likewise, the duo's bonkers sweaters are destined to be cult items. And, like their bonkers dyed furs several seasons past, they seem destined as well to distill, via other designers, into a look that's mainstream.It's hard to reject everything. It's hard to unplug from the grid. And anyway, this show wasn't, in the end, so very rejectionist. The casting made the point best: all shapes, all colors, all sizes, all sexes—and all plugged impartially into the electric current of Meadham and Kirchhoff's joyful rage. Joyful! Their show was a celebration, a rebellion, a temporary autonomous zone. It was inclusive and free—carnivalesque in the Bakhtinian sense. You were tempted, in your own hand, to add a note to the back of the invitation: "Reject everything. Embrace everyone."
16 September 2014
The Meadham Kirchhoff runway is frequently a good place to seek meaning. Sometimes, though, you just want to enjoy the clothes. This was one of Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff's "pretty" seasons, comprised of looks decadent in their hand-detailed beauty. Today's show kicked off with one of the duo's Chanel riffs, with candy-colored variations on the classic double-C bouclé jacket and tweed suit. No subversive commentary implied: This Chanel homage read much like an audition to take over the brand once the immortal Karl retires. We suspect these cheeky Londoners are the longest of long shots for that gig, but if you pictured these clothes on supermodels walking down a vast Paris runway, you'd have to agree that Meadham and Kirchhoff made a pretty convincing case. To wit, the suit in an off-red grid check, which was fully embroidered—a mind-boggling luxury, that. Ditto the black dévoré dresses with hand-beaded silver embellishment, the velvet slipdress with yellow crystal, and the frothy tiered dresses of chiffon and French lace, worn with pantaloons. The looks that really broke new ground for the brand, though, were the patchworked dresses in velvet and leather. Meadham and Kirchhoff don't typically go so graphic, but these pieces added a nice charge to the collection; they cut the froth. And, like much of what was on the catwalk today, the dresses read as not just pretty, but pretty darn commercial. Next stop: Chanel?
17 February 2014
Never mind the foreboding music that soundtracked the Meadham Kirchhoff show this afternoon. Disregard the dying roses on the catwalk, and the stage set to resemble the entrance to some abandoned, possibly haunted estate. Ignore the palette's preponderance of witchy blacks and lick of vampire red. Whatever menace was being conjured here by Edward Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff, it couldn't disguise the glee in this collection. These clothes were simply extraordinary, and you got the impression that the designers had tremendous fun making them.That sense of playfulness derived, in large part, from the collection's cheerfully ahistorical mash-up of references. There were the Meadham Kirchhoff standbys—baby-doll dresses, punkish takes on the classic Chanel suit, hand-embroidered slipdresses that hinted at the boudoir circa the Belle Époque. And more. The notable new addition to the mix, this time out, was an Elizabethan/Jacobean homage, witnessed in particular in the corset tops and microfloral-embroidered silk satin looks. Speaking after the show, Kirchhoff also pointed out the palette derived from that era: Elizabeth I, he explained, only wore black, white, red, and gold. If she were alive today, she'd undoubtedly have taken a shine to the collection's bright gold python, 1960s-style swing coat. It was certainly fit for a queen.And there were other ways you saw the designers enjoying themselves. The bat-shaped sunglasses, for instance, were total camp, while the standout look may have been an apron dress with cutwork scenes of cartoonish bunnies riding baby giraffes. That motif was also echoed in the handmade lace, and in both instances the detail drove home the crazy labor that went into these clothes. Every single piece on the runway had really been attended to, and the finish of every garment was immaculate, whether a slinky, allover beaded dress or a snappily tailored double-breasted jacket. That the labor wasn't hidden redounded to the clothing's royal mien; it reminded you that, once upon a time, expensive clothes were supposed to expose the sweat and toil of great artisans. Today, it all read as a labor of love.
16 September 2013
You walk into a Meadham Kirchhoff venue and are instantly seduced by smell. Today, it was Penhaligon's English Fern, a classic from 1910 whose soapiness would have at one time evoked the clean English schoolboys who died in the filth of World War I's trenches. Wasted youth—in all senses of the term—is a subtext in MK's work, but there was a film before today's "performance" (so it was called on the invitation) that celebrated youth taking physical action against the tyranny of Communist oppression in Budapest, Prague, and Berlin. Not wasted at all. Which meant the ambiguity of the subsequent "performance" was somewhat misleading.Enter on a row of chairs, like a waiting room: One by one, boys filed in, dressed in white light layers of indeterminate gender and provenance—christening lace, shivering latex, floral smock—their feet in whimsically painted Nordic clogs-cum-shoes. They took their seats, concentrating on their idiosyncratic semi-countercultural reading matter (Virginia Woolf'sOrlando,a copy of the classicOz). Soon each boy was taken out by someone more soberly dressed, obviously authoritative because his clothes were tailored—or at least dark—and there was no folkloric charm in his serious footwear. He made his subject take off his clothes, stripping away his identity piece by piece. Then the pair would file off, their melancholy interaction complete.Given the filmic intro, the symbolism of the performance suggested the way that history has always co-opted youth to serve its military interests. The boys were being drafted. But the penny eventually dropped. We had been watching Meadham Kirchhoff's statement about the oppressive nature of the fashion industry, where rebels like themselves will go on making a brave stand against the ultimate authorities of good taste and commercial acceptability in the face of ever-worsening odds. The show's title, I Do Nothing, sounds like a curious admission of powerlessness, especially in the light of that introductory film, whose message seemed more akin to Günter Grass's exhortation, "The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open." And the comparison of the fashion establishment to communism's monstrous inhumanity also seemed a little on the ripe side.
But there is something perversely sweet, almost preciously adolescent about such an us-against-the-world position in the line of work that Meadham and Kirchhoff have chosen for themselves, which probably explains its seductive lure for a new generation of fashion acolytes. And it only sharpened the irony of MK's performance being dressed in an impressive collection of clothes that very efficiently dealt with the demands of Mammon. But then, one look at Ed Meadham is proof enough that dressing well is the best revenge.
17 June 2013
Guests at today's Meadham Kirchhoff presentation entered the show space to the strains of Ravel's "Bolero." One reason that piece of music is so earwormingly familiar is that its central melody is repeated no fewer than 18 times; neurologists have suggested that the composition itself is pathological. Apparently, Ravel's brain was degenerating as he wrote. Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff may or may not have been aware of that factoid, but at any rate their musical selection was apt—to the extent this collection was "about" anything, Meadham noted after the show, it addressed the obliterating effect of an endless quest for perfection. This season, in other words, Meadham Kirchhoff slammed the door on its brand's brief jubilant era.There were no dancers here, no disco aliens and no spangles or pastel-colored bows. What there was—in the very first look and several to follow—was a broad strip of black vinyl, as suggestively suppressive as a censor's black bar. The vinyl was used even more emphatically elsewhere in the show—one look paired a cropped vinyl jacket with a matching skirt frothed with laser-cut vinyl lace. The technical achievement alone was remarkable. The collection's velvet pieces had a very different texture than did the vinyls, of course, but a similar sense of oppressing weight.It wouldn't be fair to call this collection joyless. It was too beautiful and moving for that term to fit. Better to describe it as a song of despair, with anguished crescendos punctuated by verses melancholy but unexaggerated. The oddest thing about this show was that occasional straightforwardness—looks such as a silvery brocade coat and gold-flecked black jacquard pants corralled the signature Meadham Kirchhoff expressiveness into clothes pared down and relatively frank. You might even say they were commercial. And with that, the Meadham Kirchhoff world proves once again a very strange place.
18 February 2013
2012: FUCK YOU. That petulant kiss-off to the immediate past at the end of Meadham Kirchhoff's show credits was the cue for an extraordinarily autobiographical statement from London's favorite design duo. They clearly had a very bad 2012—the backdrop of black garbage bags symbolized, said Ed Meadham, "throwing away the shit of last year"—and the emotional fallout infected the presentation of their new men's collection. Set to the tremulous tune of Jacques Brel's "If You Go Away" and the soundtrack of Hitchcock'sVertigo,it was simultaneously a dark paean to devotion and a melancholic meditation on loss.Earlier this week, the designers distributed a mood booklet that told a soldier's story. The loss may well have been life, as well as love. Either way, the tristesse cast a pall over the presentation. The way the models were paired and posed suggested close relationships about to be torn apart. "Man and boy," Kirchhoff murmured by way of explanation. The archaic, rustic-French flavor of the clothes supported the notion it was likely the First World War doing the tearing. There were odd echoes of a country priest's vestments in cotton smocks tattered into a kind of lace, a military sternness in pieces cut from black ciré…plus an unhealthy dose of the feyness that infects Meadham Kirchhoff's work.The way the atmosphere was saturated to an intoxicating level with Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet was reminiscent of the late artist Trojan's scent terrorism, and it's clear that, like Trojan, Ed and Ben have no intention of making their work—and their lives—easy for anyone, least of all themselves.
6 January 2013
Muchness. Moreness. Mostness. The past few Meadham Kirchhoff shows haven't exactly been minimalist affairs. But this season, Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff outdid themselves, staging a show so rococo you could actually sicken on its opulence. And that was the point, such that there was one. Backstage, after the show, Meadham insisted that for him, this collection was "about" not being about anything, aside from luxuriating in beauty and wanting more of it. How very fashion! Or looked at another way, how very anti-fashion. Because whatever Meadham's intent, this show screamed subtext. And its message was: Enough.Is there a fable or a fairy tale about a girl who, like a foie gras goose, is glutted with good things? If there isn't, Meadham Kirchhoff wrote that story here. Call it, pace Courtney, "The Girl With the Most Cake." The models passed through the runway's parlor scene vignettes with the languorous air of aimless, eighteenth-century rich girls, plucking flowers from decadent bouquets and nibbling gorgeously iced cupcakes. Despite their matelessé pannier skirts, pouf-sleeve corset jackets, and bodysuits dripping with crystal, they did not seem happy. Even so, watching the show, you couldn't help but think that a pair of the Roger Vivier-inspired, bow-covered Meadham Kirchhoff boots would make you pretty happy, though perhaps not as happy as Meadham and Kirchhoff were when the shoes arrived from a London cobbler in the nick of time before the show. And those baroque white denim jackets, and the pleated wallpaper jacquard skirt, and the little cashmere sweater reading "Yes"—what girl wouldn't be content for all time with those items in her wardrobe? The consumer appetite is an insidious thing, and don't Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff know it. How very fashion.
17 September 2012
How did this happen? Once upon a time, Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff were the angry young men of English fashion. They used their runway as a stage for expressing feminist rage, romantic torpor, alienation. Now they're hosting an interplanetary disco. What?None of the above should be read as a complaint. Quite the contrary: For Meadham Kirchhoff, jubilation is its own kind of political stance, a way of telling all the depressed, enraged, alienated misfits out there to screw the world and come join the party. There's no revenge sweeter than turning a frown upside down. After today's show, Kirchhoff described the new collection as being inspired by the club he wants to go to, if only it existed; he and Meadham used their slot on the fashion calendar not only to illustrate that fantasy but to enact it. There were colored lights on the runway, models throwing glitter in the air, and an audience of Meadham Kirchhoff cultists jamming along in the seats. It would have been fitting if the show had concluded with a spontaneous dance-off.OK, the clothes. There was a lot to take in here, and the obvious highlights included the rainbow-hued chiffon dresses, the sequin bustiers, and the showstopping, paradigm-shifting multicolored furs. The furs worked almost like an intarsia knit, with cartoon insignia made by piecing together various cuts of dyed fur. Yet the most impressive thing about this collection may have been its deep bench of accessible pieces, like the denim with cartoon appliqués, or the silvery brocade tailoring, or the nubby graphic sweaters, or the trousers in a yellow and black lumberjack check. There seemed to be a rationale beyond the commercial in these pieces; namely, Meadham and Kirchhoff are extending a hand to all the people for whom a dress made out of tinsel, say, is a bit de trop. It's their party, and seriously, everyone's invited.
20 February 2012
Designers Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff have lately found themselves fashion darlings, fêted in publications ranging fromLoveto theEvening Standard's fashion supplement. Which is ironic, since the pair has made it their business to kick against the industry's pricks in every possible way. Most of today's capacity crowd probably expected another "fuck off" show, like those of recent vintage. Instead, they got a coup de théâtre—a dazzling, candy-colored spectacle that had a few showgoers shedding tears.There was virtually no end to the mise-en-scène. The runway was decorated with balloon archways, where, to the strains of Meadham's beloved Hole, a gaggle of Courtney Love manqués appeared and applied lipstick en masse. Then they started dancing, and the models came out, taking lickety-split turns down the catwalk in check button-downs, vintage cartoon appliqués, fluffy pastel marabou coats, and little shifts and sculptured dresses with a wedding cake theme executed in couture-worthy broderie anglaise.For the second act, a bunch of schoolgirl ballerinas emerged, then a curtain dropped behind them, revealing a Busby Berkeley-style tableau of models arrayed on a giant cake. They stepped onto the catwalk one by one, exhibiting peignoir-inspired pieces, showgirl sequined hot pants, and micro dresses that looked like baby-doll versions of the gowns Marie Antoinette used to wear. After the last model disappeared backstage, a lone ballerina climbed on top of the cake and twirled.What was that about? And why was it all so oddly moving? This Meadham Kirchhoff collection was in many ways a return to the themes the designers addressed in Spring 2011. That show positively spit fury, though—protesting the ways women get hemmed in by expectations to be pretty and frilly, sexy and sweet. This time around, Meadham and Kirchhoff went through the looking glass, thought about what it means to be a girl, and came out the other side full of joy. Meadham said after the show that they'd been preoccupied with what he called "the girl on the cake": starlets, showgirls, beauty pageant winners, models, and princesses. "I wanted to take them off the cake, and put a real girl up there," he explained. A real girl, he went on, not defined by feminine frippery, though she may occasionally indulge in it. Meadham and Kirchhoff certainly do; this collection absolutely luxuriated in ruffles, spangles, and bubble-gum colors.
All that sugar and spice was spun into a collection full of theatrical looks, yes, but it also included items you could actually and happily wear. No wonder people were crying. To paraphrase Courtney Love: Who doesn't want to be the girl with the most cake?
19 September 2011
Guests at today's Meadham Kirchhoff show arrived at their seats to find a booklet titled "A Cosmology of Women," comprising zine-style cutouts of images such as Velázquez princesses and photos of Marianne Faithfull. Why? Unclear. On the runway, there were two installations, evoking the shrines that spontaneously appear at the places where famous people meet ignominious deaths. Why? Again, unclear. As the lights dimmed before the show, models clad in the new Meadham Kirchhoff looks could be seen massing at the exit to the catwalk, and when the lights came back up, all the models began marching as one toward the photographers' pit, made a turn, and marched backstage. They came back for one more parade, as before, and then the show was over. Just like that.The reasons for this speed march, at least, became clear after the show. As Ed Meadham explained, a main theme of this collection was uniforms and uniformity, and so it only made sense to show the clothes in a horde. "There's not much to these looks," Meadham added. "They didn't require being seen one by one."We'll take issue with that. Ben Kirchhoff and Ed Meadham are deep in their simplicity, and their clothes this season were as rigorously strange as usual. The designers essentially jettisoned the crinkled silks of the past two seasons and invested themselves in bouclé wool—a nod to Chanel that was relatively self-evident on the runway and then affirmed by the designers backstage. There were also takes on school uniforms (little black wool dresses and pinafores) and peasant tops and dresses. It was hard to read the detail in the clothes from the lickety-split runway procession, but that hardly meant it was lacking. There was a ton of hand embroidery, especially in the peasant looks and pinafore blouses, and the wools and knits were subjected to Meadham Kirchhoff's signature meticulous unfinishing. Looking at these pieces again, up close, after the show, you couldn't help but wish the duo had given them their individual due.But there's no point in resenting designers for the same reasons that you love them. Meadham and Kirchhoff come to their work with an intellectual seriousness all too rare among emerging designers, and they commit themselves utterly to their ideas. If that means messing with the useful conventions of the catwalk show, so be it.
21 February 2011
Meadham Kirchhoff designers Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff didn't need to start their show today with tape of an old interview with Courtney Love, but it was fine that they did. It was a good clue that this forceful show was remapping the psychosexual territory staked out by Love and artists like her, such as PJ Harvey, back in the early nineties. Meadham and Kirchhoff were thorough: Guests arrived at the Topshop venue to find the stage set with a gothic installation of flowers, dyed eerily pink, and their seats laid with 'zine-style credit sheets, which the designers had stickered by hand with hearts and flowers. The Manic Panic colors in the models' hair reinforced the grunge-era vibe, as did the makeup, which conjured the Riot Grrrls' messed-up kewpie doll look. All this might have felt heavy-handed, if the clothes on the runway hadn't been so unexpected and so hauntingly weird.The designers attacked femininity with femininity, perhaps taking their cue from Love's albumLive Through This, in which the singer raged against her own desire to live up to an internalized sugar-'n'-spice-and-everything-nice idea. Working in candy colors of lavender, yellow, and pink, then veering into carnal reds and blacks, Meadham and Kirchhoff festooned their clothes with girlish gimmicks. Ruffles, poufs, bows, glitter, you name it. The look was sickly sweet, emphasis on sickly: The fit on the garments was cannily off, sleeves and collars parodically oversize, the fabrics burnt off and cut away, hems variously disarrayed. The designers appear to have been enjoying themselves. And not at their customers' expense: The clothes were, almost despite themselves, luxuriously desirable. You could extract a wearable item from every exit—one of the hand-screened jackets, say, or a micro-pleated, burn-out silk slip skirt with hand-embroidered lace, or a drop-waist bias-cut dress with bell sleeves and a frothy long skirt. A lot of work went into these pieces, to wit, the winning group of yellow Belle Époque dresses with graphic cutouts. From afar, the cutouts looked as though they'd been done by laser; upon inspection, they were hand-cut, with hand-embroidered black edging.Though it demonstrated a development of ideas that Meadham Kirchhoff has been pursuing for a while, such as sheerness and palimpsest layering, this outing also represented a call to arms.
It was a seething riposte to the retrograde "ladylike" look seen on other runways, and it reasserted the value of anger in fashion, at a time when most designers are consumed with making clothes that are mutely pretty or politely formal. That Meadham and Kirchhoff engaged this fight from the strangest angle possible, by coming straight through beauty, is a genuine feat.
19 September 2010
Dark and goth-y? Stuck in their own groove of black and navy deconstructed streetwear? Anyone who thought they had Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff safely categorized were thrown back in their seats, mouths open at the sight of the color, flowered dresses, lace veils, and tinselly embroidery the duo piled into their collection for Fall. This pair clearly has a romantic streak—one that originated when they watched a documentary tracing Romany culture and its links from India through to Spain, which they then mixed up with imagery from Corinne Day's nineties photography and thirties bias-cut Hollywood gowns. "This one came as a total stream of consciousness," said Meadham. "It's eclectic dressing-up-box pretty things, Christmas cracker crowns, painted biker jackets. We just wanted drama. For it to be a visual assault."The departure divided audience opinion. For all those nonplussed, there were as many amazed by the creativity and risk-taking involved. Not all fashion should look the same, after all—and it often takes outsider designers like Meadham Kirchhoff to defy the predictable with a passion that comes from the heart.
20 February 2010
It's interesting to watch how a couple of uncompromising designers like Ed Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff, working in virtual isolation in the deepest East End of London, are tuning to themes other designers are also teasing out this season: a case of the collective imagination of fashion moving in mysterious ways. You might think a sense of fragile femininity, the fluttery, floaty, and romantic would be anathema to two men who have been pigeonholed as biker goths. But as it transpires, Ed Meadham, in this collection, said he'd allowed his suppressed love of antique Victorian "soft little old dead dresses" to rise to the surface and start to layer itself over the T-shirts, tailoring, and bomber jackets he and Kirchhoff have been working with for the past few seasons.It wasn't exactly a severe about-turn from the androgynous, deconstructed street look their followers love (a path that has taken the designers closer to the Belgian way than the British), but the addition of fine edgings of lace on a tailored jacket, and a plethora of flyaway chiffon dresses added a touch of something distinctly romantic. "Chaotic pleating" was Meadham's term for the irregular crimping effects in a cream dress. "We even used pink!" he exclaimed, as if that were some kind of transgression. "We were worried what people would think about that."The new delicacy brought out one stunning runway image: that of clustering velvet bows on a navy tulle wrap, which from a distance looked like a swarm of bees. A closer look at the collection on the rails backstage held the promise that Meadham Kirchhoff will have a lot more to sell in the way of pretty slips and silk polka-dot dresses, and the chance to reach many more women than those who already like the label's hip split-knee pants and parkas.
20 September 2009
So many designers are chasing the dark, street, biker vibe this season that it requires someone who really believes in it full-time to make something above, beyond, and spine-tinglingly special of it. In London, it took Ed Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff to figuratively get on their bikes and drive the possibilities through conceptually structured bombers and split-knee pants all the way to gold military embroidery and jeweled trousers. Extraordinarily, it then ended up with Manolo Blahnik boots entwined with what almost looked like the contents of an estate jewelry vault. "It is," they say, "a metaphor for insane desire."Meadham and Kirchhoff have been on a slow burn for the past few seasons, developing frayed jeans, destroyed lace, and street-elegant jackets in sync with, and sometimes ahead of, the likes of Christophe Decarnin at Balmain and Andreas Melbostad at Phi. It takes time to refine something as difficult to invent as an anatomically shaped, articulated pant, but this season their research came to fruition. The fold-back openings at the knee have now taken on a new hybrid dimension, creating the illusion of boots linked to cycling shorts. As for the gold and silver rococo embroidery, the designers were careful to steer the effects well clear of bling-tastic tackiness by balancing the aesthetic with frayed-edge cheesecloth shirting, felted striped Breton sweaters, and asymmetrically cut black bombers. They may have been in their dark place for years, but this season is Meadham and Kirchhoff's moment to shine.
23 February 2009
Ed Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff have been on a slow burn in London. Last season, their long, sinuous silhouettes in romantic navy-and-black lace and chiffon garnered them an underground following. The question was, how could that dark, goth sensibility shift gears for Spring?The answer wasn't immediately clear when they opened with sheer black organza tailoring, but when they brought on their ideas about hybrid jean-leggings, the show hit its stride. The top half of an outfit might be a slick black tunic or a shirt encrusted with what Ed Meadham calls "rotting lace"; it's what was going on below that drew every eye in the house. Their cool amalgams of denim, armor, and motocross leathers, patched together from shredded indigo denim, articulated kneepads, cross-lacing, and zippers turned out to be handmade. Quite how these could be industrially manufactured in this exact form is hard to see, but Meadham and Kirchhoff are onto something. Ever more extreme and decorative ways of dressing the leg are taking off this season, and if this pair figures out a simplified way to make theirs accessible, they could have a hit on their hands.
17 September 2008
Edward Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff opened a menswear label after meeting at Central Saint Martins in 2002. For two years, they've struggled to find a voice in womenswear, and now, under the aegis of New Generation sponsorship, they had their first chance to articulate a vision on the official catwalk. "Urban sophistication," Meadham tagged it, with Kirchhoff adding, "We're trying to think of professional women who want to look gorgeous in different moods—and we want to give them wardrobe essentials to do that."As a slightly dark pair of grown-up biker-goths, their angle is oblique (in a good way). If they cut a brown wool business suit, it's well proportioned with a short jacket that has curved vents in back, and when they approach a motorcycle jacket, it ends up a hybrid of Coco and armor. Best in show, though, were their lace-and-chiffon blouses and long, sinuous skirts, which, when topped with a black Mongolian fur chubby, create a version of the long, drawn-out silhouette London is talking about.
11 February 2008