So much for British creativity. Ashish Gupta entrusted the art direction of this lookbook to former Fashion East-ers James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks of Rottingdean Bazaar, along with the photographer Annie Collinge. This is the same trio that won this year’s Grammy for best recording package. However they seemed to be phoning it in on this project.
The designer was too diplomatic to dwell. He explained that after enduring some gut-wrenching business turbulence following the demise of Matches Fashion he decided to leave London for India, where his family and factories are based, and cloister himself in design. “It was very therapeutic, actually. Because making the clothes is the best part of this for me. And the workshop in India was like an ideas lab: we tried something new every day.”
Revived, he returned to England with this collection: “And trying all these new techniques had made me think of the power of audacity, experimentation and lightness. These are the same attributes that I think you need to survive as an independent in this industry, especially in the UK right now. So that’s why I wanted some lightness in this shoot.”
Oh well. The banal, generic casting was just one disappointment: there was no life here at all. And while this was a golden opportunity to showcase the sex in Sussex, the Hollywood in Hangleton and the raunch in Rottingdean, the final imagery was entirely bereft of glamor. The Boulder Brighton climbing wall is no substitute for the Walk of Fame. And where was the context to fit the clothes?
Ashish chose to accentuate the positives. That climbing wall look, he noted, was patched with irregularly shaped scraps and swatches of hand-embroidered fabric sourced from his own development archive, which includes things he made when he was starting out 20 years ago. A long organza dress that looked as if Collinge had shot it on the grassy shoulder of a highway was embroidered with sequined flowers that became progressively droopier and more wilted across the garment. Memories of struggling to complete a polka dot project under the tutelage of sweary legend Professor Louise Wilson had inspired him to make the bias cut chiffon T-shirt dress whose dots were all hand-drawn on the garment before being filled with sequins. “I wanted to embrace the imperfection of the process in order to showcase the analogue reality of the handicraft,” he said. Despite the eccentric presentation—what, no Photoshop?— Gupta’s wit, determination and skill was writ large in this excellent collection.