Vice Style

Unlike most other designers who fall on the so-called avant-garde side of the fashion rainbow, Hussein Chalayan isn’t some overdeliberate weirdo. He’s pleasant and chatty and doesn’t offer to show young female interviewers naked statuary of himself or constantly refer to his chakra when discussing where he finds inspiration. His collections and collaborations (the vessel which Lady Gaga was carried in on the red carpet at this year’s Grammy Awards, for example) are immensely well executed and met with practically universal praise. Subsequently, most of his stuff is imitated, or flagrantly ripped off, at every fashion-design school on earth.

But what makes Hussein really special is his insistence on focusing on the newest means by which raw materials are made into clothes. For a while now he’s been at the forefront of designers who exploit advances in technology to construct their lines—dresses frozen in perpetual motion, tunics that shoot lasers, clothing that shrinks and molts on its own and makes the wearer look like a space butterfly flitting backward and forward through time, and so on. And despite being one of the busiest designers working today and being chin-deep in Fashion Week preparations at the time of this interview, he’s in a better headspace than anyone I know. Here’s what he said about doing the fashion thing without ending up poor, crazy, or dead.