JW Anderson meets Michael Clark

There is always something more that links JW Anderson’s men and women. As anticipated by the show that last January unveiled the menswear main collection, in Milan, this season has to do with looking back. «It is not something I do often, but every once in a while, it feels necessary to move forward. The past can be a lens that focuses on the future», Jonathan Anderson reiterated this time. In the Roundhouse, a concert hall and performing arts space in London, he brought a womenswear collection that is intertwined with the work of Michael Clark, a former prodigy of Royal ballet school, an iconoclastic talent of British dance who has headed his own dance company since the 1980s and authored subversive choreographies that touched on nudity, the post-punk scene, with outfits inspired and created with Leigh Bowery, provocations among costumes and props, such as middle fingers, bare butts, and large dildos on stage.

Not surprisingly, a phallic shapes becomes, for JW Anderson, the invitation to the show and a maxi installation in the exhibition space. Rebellious by nature and irreverent by temperament, Clark also «resists looking back, despite having a body of work populated by images that are etched into our collective consciousness. Sometimes I think all roads lead to Michael Clark, at least for me. Dance, music, art, fashion. When I take stock of my lodestars, all have been part of his creative universe». For Jonathan Anderson, Clark is not only a choreographer of bodies, but of the entire British counterculture. «We have been trying to do something together for a while now», the designer said after the show. «While I was browsing through my archive, digging up elements of every collection from the last 15 years, Michael allowed me to search through his. He helped me identify my obsessions». The designer then studied how to combine the two paths, creating a moment of reconciliation with the past, since the Scottish dancer was a great inspiration during Anderson’s college years. «Working this way with Michael was very holistic: the idea of the iconography of a person you see in books, in British culture, becomes part of the street».

On the runway, Michael Clark is printed on bags and tops, as if they were the T-shirt-merch of an ideal tour for a fandom of that character that Anderson sees as a star. The kind of T-shirts you buy to feel part of something, of a community, of like-minded people. The references to Clark are seamlessly woven into the brand’s cornerstones. Just think of the classic sailor-striped JW Anderson shirt with anchor logo, now on the runway overprinted with neon letters quoting the artist. For at the same time the runway is a conduit for finding what the JW Anderson look is and reaffirming it. «It was nice to go back to shows like the one at Tate modern, the first ones with paisleys, and understand what they mean today. It is a good place to be able to move forward with different things. And I think this was the right time to reflect on that. It was fun, I find it a really liberating process. This is because every time I see all these things, I usually hate them, so to try to make them better in some way was good».

Judgment. Actualized versions of JW Anderson’s greatest pieces send the room into raptures, among editors who play at finding similarities and differences from seat-to-seat. «Aileron pants come from fall-winter 2021, kangaroo pockets from winter 2013, classic puffy coats with huge collars come from the cold season of 2020», they whispered to each other. And of course, they already imagine them in their own wardrobes, invaded by a longing that is not nostalgia. This is because, by the very character of Jonathan Anderson, the work on the heritage of his brand knows how not to be self-referential at all, but rather more self-critical. (all rights reserved)