Christopher Kane’s Painterly SS´21 Collection Took Him Back To His Art Student Roots

If you were quite chuffed with your newfound crafting or baking skills during lockdown, Christopher Kane sees your efforts and raises you some 100 mind-blowing paintings. The Scottish designer spent quarantine brushing up on his fine art skills (it was his foundation course before fashion), taking to his London garden and studio to paint what looked like a never-ending series of fictional portraits and abstracts. Some of the canvases were big enough to fill the windows of his store in Mount Street, where the designer hosted previews in the days leading up to the release of his spring/summer 2021 film.

It showcased a collection covered in those stirring and wildly colourful motifs. “I hadn’t painted for 14 years,” he said. “I forgot I could actually paint.” Faced with limitation, zero socialising and a lot of time on his hands, Kane took to his garden – glue and glitter in hand – and began to paint the portraits that came to mind, figuratively filling his home with people in a time when human contact was impossible. “They’re portraits of girls I don’t know,” he explained of the expressive faces he referred to as his “spoiled brats”.

“I was having a laugh and a good time, not thinking about the pressures of it all,” he recalled. “Then, it just started to feel right.” Kane transferred his colourful motifs to a series of 1960s silhouettes, constructed in Tyvek fabric that gave the textured effect of a real painter’s canvas. Shape ranged from a dainty nipped-in dress to pyjamas he said were also a nod to his own wardrobe during lockdown. “It was so therapeutic in the sense it took my head out of the reality we were in,” he reflected. “It was an outlet to be creative again.”

Collection was an apt illustration of the power of time in the creative process. Different to anything he has done for a long time, you could feel in the garments his reinvigoration, his strictly personal touch, and – in the expressions on those fictional faces – the rollercoaster of emotions we all went through during lockdown. In a corner of Kane’s store was the self-portrait he had painted as part of the project. Dark, gloomy and full of fear, it was the total opposite of the relaxed and resolved designer, who greeted press a few months on. That’s the difference a creative outlet makes.