This is the first collection of London-based Royal College of Art graduate Kim Choong-Wilkins, 26. Entitled 'Bodybound', it explores the human condition; desire and the perverse. Referencing both the macabre photography of Joel-Peter Witkin and this particular verse by Christina Rossetti, the collection revolves around skin, sinew, muscle and bone. It pumps sex back into a craft that has become lust-less, prompting arousal and addiction for men's knitwear. It examines the relationship between seduction and repulsion. KCW aimed to develop an aesthetics whereby form and structure have the same baring as texture. There is so much more to menswear knit than making a statement based on the depth of a neckline ! He wants his knits to be crackling with attitude. The fabrics of the collection are hard and glistening, with aggressively distinctive shapes, nothing nice or polite. Playing with punk and goth ? Not intentionally. The work of Joel-Peter Witkin played an important part, however. There is something really mesmeric about his work. As a viewer, you enter into an act of great aesthetic seduction and yet the subject matter is so often disquieting, often repelling. KCW likes that there is a great use of the classical vernacular that we are all so used to seeing in old masters paintings, and the feeling of discomfort that creeps up on you as you digest what is displayed before you. In that, JPW's aesthetics is quite transgressive, which explains the punk elements in this collection.
German expressionism of the 1920s promoted an ethic of change, and a willingness to look to the future by experimenting with bold new ideas and artistic styles. German expressionist film makers used the mise-en-scène (lighting, make-up, set-design, staging, etc). This gave it a chiaroscuro effect. It has more visual depth. 'The cabinet of Dr Caligari' from 1919 is an example. Everything was highly conceptualized. It maintained artistic control over the placement of scenery, light and shadow to enhance the mood of the film. Serious designers such as Kim Choong-Wilkins are influenced by this same expressionist aesthetics. Kim Choong-Wilkins expresses this same bold experimentalism, advocated by the German expressionists of the 1920s. His clothes have an attitude. They have a point of view. In fashion, in music, everything is so boring today. The big labels aren't willing to make a statement. They don't have a point of view. Everyone has the same point of view today. But Kim Choong-Wilkins is in the vanguard of fashion. Just awesome.
German expressionism of the 1920s promoted an ethic of change, and a willingness to look to the future by experimenting with bold new ideas and artistic styles. German expressionist film makers used the mise-en-scène (lighting, make-up, set-design, staging, etc). This gave it a chiaroscuro effect. It has more visual depth. 'The cabinet of Dr Caligari' from 1919 is an example. Everything was highly conceptualized. It maintained artistic control over the placement of scenery, light and shadow to enhance the mood of the film. Serious designers such as Kim Choong-Wilkins are influenced by this same expressionist aesthetics. Kim Choong-Wilkins expresses this same bold experimentalism, advocated by the German expressionists of the 1920s. His clothes have an attitude. They have a point of view. In fashion, in music, everything is so boring today. The big labels aren't willing to make a statement. They don't have a point of view. Everyone has the same point of view today. But Kim Choong-Wilkins is in the vanguard of fashion. Just awesome.
