“I like things that cannot be disputed,” Andre Walker tells Alexander Fury in AnOther Magazine S/S18
“Right now I am really interested in foundational truths. I mean, last year was the year of post-truth. I feel like a lot of sensually experiential design ideals are giving a back seat to truth. I always love silk, or cotton. I like mostly natural fibres – because I see them as normal. I see them as a part of an undeniable truth. They’re also biodegradable. The devil is when you try to counterfeit nature. Do you know Vandana Shiva? She’s been doing a lot of work to combat Monsanto [a multinational agricultural and biotechnology corporation] and the patenting of seeds, which they’ve been working towards alongside the World Health Organisation and some other large industrial groups. Shiva’s saying, ‘It’s not possible to patent an apple seed because mankind didn’t invent it.’ I feel like that’s where my obsession is right now. I like things that cannot be disputed.”
Fashion designer Andre Walker has been a peripatetic presence on international fashion schedules since the early 1980s. After staging his first show, aged 15, in a Brooklyn nightclub, he sold to the avant-garde boutique Patricia Field and by the mid-1990s boasted a CV of great innovation and acclaim. Walker’s clothes – coats cut like oven mitts, trousers that wrap to resemble skirts, presaging famous styles by Jean Paul Gaultier – still seem contemporary. This season he presented a collection as a retrospective, borrowing styles from admirers and reissuing them in new fabrics. It was shown on the steps of Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs: his ingeniously inventive clothes belong inside.
Hair: Blake Erik at Statement Artists using Hairstory. Make-up: Susie Sobol at Julian Watson Agency. Set design: Ian Salter at Frank Reps. Digital tech: Frederike Heide. Photographic assistants: Christopher Parente and Max Bernetz. Styling assistants: Rebecca Perlmutar, Kat Banas and Athena Zammit. Make-up assistant: Ayaka Nihei. Set-design assistant: George de Lacey. Production: Artistry London. Post-production: Studio Private
This story originally featured in the Spring/Summer 2018 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale now.
