“I just want to destroy everything,” Matthew Miller explained when we last met. “It’s my nature, you’ve seen me after a show, I tear everything down and start again.” It’s true, I’ve watched him take great pleasure in ripping mood board images down and clearing his studio space to begin work on a new season. For spring/summer 16, he focussed his destructive desire on his frustrations of everyday life and the realities of business.
“The collection was born out of my irritations of working on business plans and working on things I’ve not trained for,” he explains. “It’s the frustrations of reality really. I felt like my head was going to explode. After three months, I just felt like a businessman and I wanted to destroy that side of me. I had to destroy it before it consumed me.” he concedes. He means it and there’s a definite sense of release now that the collection has been presented. “It was cathartic to start with this idea of traditional tailoring and then destroy it.” The result is a sartorial self-cleanse. The only way to move on was to rip it up and start again. “For so long, I felt constricted and choked by the politics and paperwork of life, we’ve all been there.” Don’t let the fuckers get you down!
The resulting uniforms of blended cotton and metal suiting, twist and contort around the the human form, echoing the rigidity of contemporary life and the restrictions on our freedoms. The words ‘conform’, ‘control’ and ‘restrict’ form the backbone of the collection and whilst softly echoing throughout the designs, are served up as visible reminders on the tagged wrists of his tailored troublemakers.
Credits
Text Steve Salter
Photography Mitchell Sams