The Business of Fashion
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LONDON, United Kingdom — Since starting out as a one-table atelier with less than a handful of employees, Craig Green's success as one of the biggest names at London Fashion Week Men's can be traced to a design signature that he has both sustained and developed over the years.
For BoF Editor-at-Large Tim Blanks, Green's latest collection — a meditation on skin — is "a repertoire of statements" that betrays an emerging narrative of Green's body of work. His designs consistently draw from the functionality of workwear, be it through pared-back production methods or what Green refers to as "communal ways of dressing" (uniforms, he says, are "a positive thing" that could even become romanticised as labour is increasingly automated).
Pragmatism and utilitarianism clearly underpin Green's approach to fashion, but his experiences as a designer are also characterised by the mystery of not knowing: it was a self-confessed "haphazard" career path that led him to fashion, an industry of which he was widely ignorant beyond the experimental clothing of the subcultures he saw in his native North London.
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This philosophy of "not knowing" extends to the collections themselves, which are deliberately restricted to single techniques and fabrics to avoid the "stunting" effects of having an abundance of choice. Even in the face of fashion critics, Green is reluctant to provide show notes for fear of imposing an interpretation on his audience. Sometimes, he says, their responses to a show are "not what it's about, which is funny."
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