Craig Green: Fashionable nomadism with a surgical twist

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jan 7, 2019

Craig Green is the high priest of nomadism in fashion.
 
He may not have invented the category, but single-handedly he has made it very much his own.

In every show he does the cast looks like they are on some sort of journey. Never more so than on a dank Monday morning in London, in a collection that managed to connect tailoring, sportswear and surgical garb.
 
Staged deep inside the bowels of The Vault, a brick basement in Old Billingsgate Market on the bank of the Thames, the show was also a reminder that Green is currently, and by far, London’s most inventive menswear designer. 

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His best moment was a final quintet of massive hooded coats in technical fabrics. Their fronts mono-color, their backs featuring abstract landscapes and cultural collages in bright burgundy or Delft ceramic blue.
 
Surgical ideas yes, but also maniacal, like the multi-strand straight jackets in a material than looked like washi, the paper used to make walls in traditional Japanese homes. That said, his multi-pocket plaid cabans for guys were a tad absurd, but somehow they still advanced the stylistic zeitgeist. While you just know that Craig’s semi-sheer combos of see-through nylon and light knits will be copied up and down the global high-street.

His most exaggerated idea - elasticated plastic bubble wrap cut into combos of tunic and pants made in unwashed neon hues.
 
“I was thinking of a man made of glass. Fragility that also means strength. Tradition, craft, medieval textile techniques and maybe, as someone said, The Operation game,” laughed the designer, referring to the children’s game.
 
In an era of monotonous athleisure, Green dreams up the UK’s most refreshing tastes for the fashion palate. Powered on by a brilliant mash-up soundtrack from ace French DJ Frédéric Sanchez, and worn by a cast who clearly loved the whole avant-gardism of the clothes, the show earned Green the biggest applause of three-day London Fashion Week’s Men season. He merited that.