The dark prince
Ten years after graduating from London’s Central Saint Martins—and going from no sales for the first few seasons to having an eagerly expected show on the Paris Fashion Week calendar—british designer and enfant terrible GARETH PUGH is now playing with dia
In mid-October, 30 degrees Celsius is high heat for Mumbai. And dressed in his own Tee, pants, and patent leather boots with three-inch heels, all topped by a beautifully cut Rick Owens jacket, Gareth Pugh is feeling it. “It is like stepping into a wall of heat and humidity,” he says, of his first experience of India. He’s here to unveil a fantastical neckpiece he has designed for the global diamond behemoth Forevermark. Its 5,600 flawless stones weighing 91.98 karats (in total) are micro-pavéd and set on a structure of steel weighing 478 grams, held closed with a titanium pin shaped like a stake and topped with a single, perfect sparkler. Close to half a kilo, with spikes jutting out threateningly, he obviously hasn’t designed it for comfort. “No, I haven’t,” he says, laughing. “It’s more of an exhibition piece that’s not meant to be sold.”
It’s a line he could have used for his first few collections. Made with inflatable balloons, distorting the body into unrecognisable polyhedrons with unabashed fetishist leanings, his clothes have never been for the weak of heart. Leather, PVC, nylon, neoprene, rubber, fur, hair: These are his favourite materials. And though his collections of late have evolved into shows that do give separates (styled together for eerie effect but wearable individually) that aren’t as extreme as when he began, the severity, even in a pair of fluid chiffon trousers, is never completely gone.
After studying at London’s Central Saint Martins, where Christopher Kane was a classmate, his 2003 graduation collection earned him a cover of Dazed & Confused magazine. After that, he appeared on the British reality TV show Fashion House, and dressed Kylie Minogue while squatting (illegally) in an artist’s commune in Peckham. He also showed at Fashion East, a group show at London Fashion Week, for which he had only four weeks to put together a collection. And even though he won the British Fashion Council/Topshop New Generation sponsorship in January 2006, it wasn’t till August 2007 that he sold anything. “I enjoy the ideas side of things rather than the commercial aspect anyway,” he says.
His Fall 2013 collection, in direct contrast to his Forevermark necklace, uses something as commonplace as diamonds are rare: Garbage bags. Black, flimsy bin-liners that he bought in bulk from a one-pound shop near his studio. These he turned into couture-esque pieces in a stunning finale lineup on the ramp. This collection—with its 51 looks compared to his first lineup of 12 entries for Fall 2006 shown in London—is being hailed as his most masterful yet. Mingling his love for distorted volumes, bondage, and Japanese pattern-cutting, he also showed wearable funnel-neck styles and billowing skirts. And that is the magic of Gareth Pugh. Just as he has contrasted modern, high-tech steel with the ageless romance of diamonds, his life, like his work, has always been about contrasts.