You think you’ve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I’m watching all the time

I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean

I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye

(Judas Priest)

Belgian grand artists have a history of political activism (Magritte, Brel, and for a more recent example Stromae comes to mind) and thus the theme of Walter van Beirendonck’s latest mad grand collection is thus appropriately called the Electric Eye – a clear and unmistakable dig at the total global surveillance state of affairs through which we are currently living.

A dark and ominous ‘electric eye’ (with arms & hands sternly folded) under a black thundercloud is set in the sky on our runway show invitations in poster format and this leitmotiv is finding its way woven and plastered on all Walter’s latest grand creations SS16. For those of you who have been following Walter you probably know that some of his work will sometimes remind of a movie set out of a latest and unexplained version of the famous tea party found in Alice in Wonderland. So the electric eye finds itself plastered unto skin-colored latex (on bare skin of course) and woven into the fabrics into jackets next to the faces of cute rabbits and wild flowers. Colorful and naïve an ominous lurking omen of super-surveillance invades our style – as we adopt and adapt its power which is trying to control us. Of course David Bowie sings melancholy songs coming from on high out of the ceiling backstage. Ziggy plays guitar, but wherever we go we carry the Electric Eye on our chest, either as a mark of control, or in reverse, perhaps as a token of liberation from the same as we incorporate the dark clouds of the mindset of our times into our style and in our personal fashion.

Walter is a rebel with a cause and clearly he was thinking when creating this, his latest Mad Hatter Tea Party of a collection because right after the show dozens of interview teams are trying to get a few words out of him on the podium of the complete gem of a theatre which is the Théâtre Du Châtelet in Paris. Were they asking him questions on the politics of style or on the style of politics? How shocking! How scandalous! How craven!

But none of this was really necessary.  Because Walter’s creations are of such an extraordinary serenity and beauty that they transcend all post-modern paranoia. They are colorful, inspiring, and eerily reminiscent of a forgotten human past in which things were simpler, kinder, and not as fast.  The millenary part of the new collection was simply astounding, especially the early medieval scarecrow hats – something out of Bosch or Brueghel – which transported the grateful attendees by at least half a millennium into the distant past.  No need to contemplate ‘electric eyes’ at that point.  And if that was precisely the idea of the collection then it succeeded wonderfully well.

Stephen Jones deserves a special citation in this context because he made all the hats for this beautiful and latest and mad and grand Walter van Beirendonck collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Sandro and photos by Mous.