Flipping the accepted flow of work on its head, the emerging design talent began with fall/winter 16’s campaign shoot and worked his way back to the garments. What began as a pure desire to create and collaborate with photographer Hazel Gaskin soon evolved into warped textiles and sartorial echoes. “We’ve wanted to work with each other for a while and after a few drinks at a party, we just decided to do it”, Mullins explained as he weaved through his presentation. “At the time, we didn’t know what it was going to be for, it was just for us. When the [images] came back, we had to them use because it would feel self-indulgent to keep them to ourselves, so I just thought, ‘why not put them on the clothes?'” At a time of industry-wide introspection, why not rip up the rulebook?
“Essentially, we’re reversing the whole process, shooting the campaign which feed into the clothes whilst the looks from the shoot are now framed in perspex as artworks around the presentation. Hopefully it captures the cycle, energy and color of that shoot. From creating the primary people and the feel of the photographs, the presentation almost creates a shrine, objectifying both them and the clothes,” Mullins explained. “It’s all a big double entendre, isn’t it?”
From laser etched denim to t-shirt graphics without the t-shirts and faces draped over faces to models wearing snapshots of themselves, the hyper-real presentation offered one multi-sensory meta moment after another. Boredom might inspire him, but there’s nothing boring about Alex Mullins.
Credits
Text Steve Salter
Photography Mitchell Sams