“My oldest memory of fashion is getting into trouble at school for drawing nude bodies… Willies and boobies,” Christopher Kane has revealed in a new interview with the Guardian. The Scottish designer spoke about his fall/winter 15 collection, Lovers’ Lace, which layers lace cut-outs of bodies to form colorful sheer dresses like the one FKA Twigs wore to the Met Gala, prompting a flurry of shocked headlines like, “OMG is that a penis on FKA Twigs’ dress?!”.
“I grew up in a very open household, with two brothers and two sisters, everyone running about – it was just very natural,” he explains, ahead of a life drawing class he is hosting in his Mayfair store to celebrate Frieze, lead by his school art teacher, Janey Broughan. Broughan told the newspaper that, “When Christopher was about 15, I encouraged him to attend an evening class in life drawing at Glasgow School of Art. A few days later he appeared with an impressive folio of figure studies, some of which were nudes. I asked him where he had found his models. ‘My sisters, of course!’ he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world”. “It was typical of Christopher and Tammy that they did not give a single hoot for normal social conventions while pursuing their artistic goals,” she explains.
Of the tabloid-scandalizing collection, Kane says, “It’s about drawing bodies on the body. It’s erotic, not pornographic. I mean, there was a penis but it wasn’t, you know, happy. Haha!,” adding that, in any case, “I don’t care about good taste or bad taste. That’s why I love neon. It’s all around us, and it’s so beautiful, but we don’t see it.”
Credits
Photography Mitchell Sams