At least politically speaking, 2009 has been a pretty surreal year: America’s first black President smokes cigarettes on the White House lawn, NASA found ice on the moon just a few days ago, and perpetually prepubescent Ashlee Simpson somehow gave birth. Perhaps it’s the ever-bizzaro cultural climate that’s causing fashion designers, like rising Chinese star Du Yang, to embrace their more eccentric talents.    
Unlike some of her peers, Du Yang, who graduated last year from Central Saint Martins, gets her potency as a surrealist designer from the cheerful, even comical, approach she brings to a design tradition dominated by the dark and gloomy. Fellow surrealists Junya Watanabe, Rei Kawakubo, Victor & Rolf, and Alexander McQueen tend to concoct ominous and often sinister visions. But Yang’s signature blend of cartoony outlandishness and trompe l’oeil abstraction is more likely to make a person wonder if they dozed off at the computer screen than question the nature of good versus evil. 
     Yang’s latest collection, It is a Dream in Colors, takes inspiration from the designer’s “spiritual journey to India,” which apparently included (if her chunky knit textiles are anything to go by) a surfeit of watermelons, strawberries, eyeglass-wearing gurus, bumblebees, and cornrows (the hairstyle — not the farming technique).

Some fashion world crossovers are to be expected. These days, it seems a hot young singer or actor is required to announce the launch of an eponymous ready-to-wear collection within twenty-four hours of their first album or summer blockbuster. But in the case of 26-year-old Nebraska native Timo Weiland, resettlement in the fashion world meant packing up a desk at Deutsche Bank Securities and explaining to coworkers that theatrical neck ware — and not finance — was his true life calling.
     Weiland’s timely pre-crash Wall Street exodus was fortuitous in producing his first accessories collection, Timo, which featured the ultra-slim neckties and poufy Edwardian satin collars that remain the brand’s signature accents. Business partner Alan Eckstein, 24, supplied the marketing and retail wisdom that got Weiland’s hip frills wrapped around the necks of Chloe Sevigny and Josh Hartnett. Since then, the duo have enjoyed an enduring “downtown darling” status, filling necktie orders for high-profile club-goers and style icons, all the while working toward the launch of a comprehensive Timo Weiland collection for men and women.
     Their plans came to fruition this fall at New York Fashion Week, where Weiland and Eckstein unveiled a fully realized — and startlingly directional — Spring 2010 debut collection saturated in their characteristically androgynous Edwardian flair.

View of the Dysfashional exposition, Luxembourg 2007. Photography courtesy of André Morin.

One could hardly be blamed for expecting to see a few garments at an art exhibit purportedly about style, but you won’t find a single couture-swathed mannequin at Dyfashional, the daring new project that’s causing fashionistas — even after the conclusion of their busiest season — to board one final airplane in the name of global fashion.  Rather than present the clothing and trends typical of a fashion-oriented showcase, Dysfashional fancies itself an expansive investigation into the materials and mechanisms that inform style as a vehicle of self-expression. After two wildly successful tours — the first in Luxembourg to celebrate the European Capital of Culture in 2007, and the second at Mudac, Musée du Design et des Arts Appliqués Contemporains de Lausanne in 2008 — the exhibit will show its new and improved edition on October 30th at Paris’ Passage du Désir.
     “Dyfashional was conceived as a site where the exhibition space becomes an experimentation space, an exploration ground for both the artists and visitors,” says curator Luca Marchetti. “As a fashion exhibition which does not exhibit clothing, Dysfashional shows that fashion is, beyond the objects that materialize it, an unstable state of sensibility.”

In the immortal words of Albert Einstein, “in order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.” We’re not too keen on blindly assembling into anybody’s fashion flock, but in the case of the North Circular Knitwear Company, the English woolies brand “knit by grannies and supported by supermodels,” we could be persuaded to wear a bit of sheep, if not become one ourselves.
     At the end of October, North Circular will launch a collection of handmade knits fashioned entirely of rescued Wensleydale wool, available on a made-to-order basis via their website, where not only can you meet the handsome Wensleydale flock, but select the color, size and style of your lovingly woven garment. The Wensleydale sheep — along with the entire British wool industry — have fallen on hard times as of late, and brand founders Lily Cole, Katherine Poulton, Alice Ashby, and Isobel Davies made the downtrodden breed’s improved well-being the main concern of their stylish business venture.

Too often a promising new CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist will buckle under the pressure that the distinction begets and produce a disappointing post-win collection. It’s the Britney Spears Condition played out at Bryant Park — too much praise, too little guidance. Happily, for every ten let downs there’s one remarkable triumph — on September 12, the young label Ohne Titel proved they were well equipped to meet the industry’s demands with a spectacularly confident collection that bellied their years. Like so many of fashion’s most powerful duos (think Marc Jacobs and business genius Robert Duffy), Flora Gill and Alexa Adams met at Parsons in 1999, where they bonded over a shared love of geometric design influences and architectural garment construction. After cutting their teeth under the tutelage of reborn cult-favorite Helmut Lang, and universal crowd pleaser Kaiser Karl, the girls reunited in 2006 to cofound a label dedicated to “intelligent design for a strong and modern woman.”
     Their Spring 2010 collection, which, according to the show notes, took “the graphic lines, lush textures, and bold colors in Egyptian reliefs and sculptures” as inspiration, allowed Gill and Adams to perfect their signature body-con technique within the limits of more intellectual — not to mention more difficult — design parameters.

“Predictable” is hardly a word to ascribe to Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela, but if anyone was going to pull velvet-covered magenta trainers out of his stylish sleeves, it was him. Vetted sneaker aficionados of hip-hop culture and general shoe freaks the world over are guaranteed to scoop these up faster than you can say Colette exclusive — Kanye West already featured them as a must-have on his personal blog, “Kanye Universe-city”.
     Inspired by the 1970’s and specifically Bryan Singer’s film The Usual Suspects, the new kicks represent Margiela’s cheeky take on the classic American athletic shoe — chucks and Vans, in particular — and the bizarre status symbol it has become. Two unisex styles in bright cobalt blue and hot magenta are available in traditional high or low top versions, with upper, midsole, outer sole, and laces entirely cast in supple premium velvet. The irresistible gaudiness is sure to make them a street style favorite in spite of their considerable impracticality on the actual street.

Menswear from Izzy Lane's 2009 Ethical Fashion

Seven-plus days of champagne-soaked, Swarovski-studded Fashion Week opulence can leave your average “green” enthusiast feeling unconscionably wasteful. The daily arrival of extravagant fashion invitations printed on rubber or dusted in 14k gold can make the most cynical of eco-skeptics wonder: “what is the carbon footprint of chic?”
     Happily, a heroic few among the fashionable set have made going green a style priority for Spring/Summer 2010.  Located at Soho’s fittingly titled King of Green Street boutique, the GreenShows will host presentations by earth-friendly, fair-trade labels including Bodkin, Bahar Shahpar, Izzy Lane, Lara Miller, Mr. Larkin, and House of Organic over the course of two days.  Of course, runway beauty will be suitably “eco”, with John Masters Organics providing all hair-styling services. In addition, a kickoff party on opening night will aim to raise awareness about the Rainforest Action Network (RAN)—an organization that attempts to educate fashion and luxury brands who use custom paper packaging about the dangerous environmental side effects that come from farming tree pulp in tropical rainforests.

No contemporary clothing brand — with the obvious exception of Maison Martin Margiela — is cloaked in quite so much mystery as the Deth Killers of Bushwick. Eight years ago, the Brooklyn-based atelier made its debut as “Inner City Raiders vs. Deth Killers”, purportedly named after the centuries-old violence raging between two of the borough’s most notorious gangs. According to legend (available in its entirety on DethKillers.com), the gang leaders, exhausted after years of unremitting battle, drew up a peace treaty stipulating not only the end of their bloody turf war, but the creation of a fashion company. The mega-brand they summoned “would combine and capitalize on the clubs’ exquisite and deadly senses of style. Styles of dress so sexy, they were known to lure Mamasitas, Hoochie Mamas, and Rock Goddesses from all five boroughs.” And it was so.
     The Deth Killers spent three glorious years on the periphery of mainstream fashion — outfitting David Bowie in tight jeans and punk rock jackets for his 2003 “Reality Tour” — only to disappear altogether a year later. The circumstances surrounding the brand’s dissolution remain unclear: “If you happen to be wondering where the Deth Killers have been for the last few years, it’s a long story,” states their new website. “You might want to go to the bathroom now, because it’s very long and very boring.”

Photography by Peter Gehrke

For Stockholm-based designer Sandra Backlund, the opportunity to work with Italian luxury knitwear producer Maglificio Miles signified as much of an end as it did a beginning. Until now, Backlund has been doing everything herself, producing mind-bogglingly meticulous sculptural fantasies entirely by hand and on a made-to-order basis. In 2007, her distinctive “three-dimensional collage” knitting style made her the grand prix winner of Festival International de Mode et De Photographie in Hyeres, France. Her support network at the White Club, a non-profit organization in Milan that connects talented young designers with established fashion industry professionals, offered Backlund’s portfolio to Miles, who wisely approached her for a collaborative “production test”.
     The fruits of their labor, the Control-C Collection for F/W 09-10, offers a decidedly more severe vision than Backlund’s past collections, which tended toward charmingly oddball. Composed of five machine-knit and four handmade pieces, the collection proves that Backlund’s bizarre, gravity-defying aesthetic is realizable via machine — and, therefore, mass produceable. The handmade aspect, however, will always be an integral part of Backlund’s design process.