Michael Halpern On The Real-Life Glamour Of His A/W '21 Collection

Last season, in September 2020, Michael Halpern paid tribute to the frontliners with a collection and a short film created in their honour. For autumn/winter 2021, the designer dedicates his collection to a feeling of emergence he hopes will become a reality once it hits stores in the late summer.

How do you follow last season’s film with the frontliners wearing your creations?

When we did that, we weren’t in a lockdown. This time we are. So, this season feels weirder to me than September. I personally didn’t feel it was the right thing to do a big production or a video-taped show. It would go against everything I was saying last season; why we did the frontliners and why PPE was so important.

Instead, you’ve done a scaled-back photo shoot?

Yes, we built a set in the studio and shot just one model. Sage Flowers in Peckham designed a huge landscape of dried flowers. It’s really nice to do something small and considered. It’s still optimistic, but it’s appropriate for the time. These clothes will be going into stores when we open, so I think this is the time to do something quite ostentatious for when we’re hopefully able to wear it. We just can’t showcase it like that.

Is it a party collection?

We’re not doing big crazy showpieces. We’re not doing fully-encrusted crystal and feather balls. This is a collection that is about what people are going to wear when they come out of lockdown.

So it’s opulent daywear?

I wouldn’t say “day”… It’s sort of like a figurative post-lockdown dance fest. You can move in these clothes. They’re not restricting like a big ballgown. They still have that design work behind them, but you can really move in them.

If the vaccines do their job, the store delivery of this collection will coincide with the end of lockdown…

Yeah, it felt sort of like the finality of lockdown for us. Everyone I’ve spoken to is so tired of what they’re wearing now – simple, comfortable – so this is the antithesis. You want to feel like you’re putting on clothing. You want it to feel different than normal. It’s not some chiffon thing you waft around in at home, but something you go out in.

No more “comfort-wear” for the Halpern woman?

I’m so sick of that. I wanted to bring back some of those sequined bustiers, I wanted to do catsuits, I wanted to do tailoring that’s not “luxe home tailoring” but real tailoring, in sequins and duchesse.
In that transition, it looks like you’ve stepped up your sex appeal?

The diamanté braziers are quite “revealing” for what we normally do. It’s about being really risk-taking and I think people are going to want to do that in the autumn: a high slit, a low V neckline, lots of waists, lots of shoulder. That kind of sexy is new for me. I really enjoyed it. It’s very different draping with a little piece of fabric rather than a big one. You have to be more considered: millimetres versus centimetres.

I spotted a gown with a super low-cut back…

It’s our dangerous dress. You have to be careful in her. It’s about being that ostentatious but not feeling cumbersome. It has to feel easy.

And what about that leopard-print party dress with the corset and the red sequins?

If you’re really going to go out, this is what you’re going to wear. It’s the furthest you can get from a Zoom call.

As someone who deals in glamour and eveningwear, how has the pandemic affected your business?

Between June and December last year, nothing was happening. Then, just before December, when the new collection went into stores, it picked up and sold out. I don’t know who’s wearing it or where they’re going, but it shows a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

Were you worried about sustaining your brand?

You’re worried if your business is going to continue on the path that it was, and after a time of not selling high glamour during lockdown, for people to be buying it again feels like all our work over this past year paid off. I wanted to keep making beautiful things, not in a trivial way, but in an earnest and sincere way. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly, but to see it moving again is beyond words for me.