Christopher Kane’s “Humble Flora And Fauna” A/W´23 Collection

At the heart of Christopher Kane’s collection was a focus on the elements of the world that normally get ignored and attributed less value, writes Anders Christian Madsen. Here, five things you need to know about his autumn/winter 2023 show.

It was an extreme exercise in elevation

Enveloped in shiny material in different colours, the seats that lined Christopher Kane’s runway in a gallery-like space in White Lion Street looked like an art installation. On closer inspection, they were humble hay bales wrapped in simple plastic. The dichotomy was a foreshadowing of a collection that consistently transformed simplicity and normality into avant-garde. In typical Kane style, the collection was an exercise in how to make the trivial sophisticated, intellectual – even arcane. In a Great Britain that’s seen better, smarter and certainly richer days, that message counted for a lot.

It was inspired by Kane’s childhood

The collection was inspired by Kane’s memories of the outfits his mother, aunts and neighbours wore in the 1980s: the uniforms of waitresses, housewives, and cleaners. The ideas spoke for themselves: chopping board collars erected on the shoulders of dresses, bustles on skirts made to look like tied bin bags, and colours informed by those of school uniforms. It was reality made unreal: a fantastical take on the make-do and mend mentality that sets in when times are tough. But it was Kane’s celebration of those very same things – an elevation of the unrecognised.

It featured AI-generated prints

Like the bustles that decorated the fronts and backs of skirts, nothing was like it seemed: “They were meant to be intestines at the front, unravelling, and then it became an intestine bustle,” Kane said backstage. “Then it was almost like waddle, like duck waddle, waddling along like a black swan, an ugly duckling.” He projected his elevating spotlight onto the humble parts of flora and fauna that aren’t traditionally seen as ‘fine’. The AI-generated prints of swarms of rats, chickens and piglets emblazoned column dresses were both cute and creepy, confronting you with all your prejudice and phobias.

Floral prints were humble

At the heart of Kane’s collection was a focus on the elements of the world that normally get ignored and attributed less value. It was true for the animal prints, which he referred to as “working-class animals” and for the floral motifs he said were made up of unassuming flowers – not wild ones, but the urban ones that grow between tiles that you rarely even notice. “I never go for the beautiful flowers. I always go for the working-class flowers. Really humble. They’re always just trodden on.”

It went against the grain

You could make what you wanted of Kane’s proposals, but his elevation of the normal and the ignored felt pretty loaded in the current financial climate. “Life is beautiful for some more than others,” a voice on the soundtrack repeated (to the beat of a purring cat) and backstage, he referenced his childhood growing up in working-class Scotland. For all his achievements and avant-garde status, Kane has feet firmly planted in the soil that nurtured him. In a time when fashion’s obsession with glamour cuts a striking contrast to the real world, his show was something of a wake-up call.