School of Life Sunday Sermon: Hussein Chalayan on Fitting In
10th February 2013 · 11:30am - 11:30am
In person | Virtual event
Fashion Designer Hussein Chalayan explores the beauty and advantages of not fitting in.; I think the experience of feeling isolated of not fitting in creates the urge to explore. —Hussein Chalayan We’re social animals: we need to belong. And if we want to belong we’d better fit in. Or at least that’s what we learn from the classroom and the office. But Hussein Chalayan wants to show us how not fitting in despite common sense is a creative virtue that may even expand our sense of belonging. By his own account Chalayan has never quite fitted in. He spent a childhood bouncing between war-torn Cyprus and the UK. Today he is known as a world-leading fashion designer. But his catwalk shows are intricate performances and his collections extend to experimental films and gallery installations troubling those who like to keep fashion away from philosophy and art or prefer designers to settle into a ‘style’. In this sermon Chalayan will share the projects that he calls his “life studies” made to help him understand the world. One investigates how national events transform our personal identities another changes disgust to an appreciation of beauty and another probes the magical inexpressible and hidden. His work is a category-defying series of provocations to question and transform what we take for reality. So where does this exuberant curiosity and constant shape-shifting come from? Chalayan explains that the once-painful experience of not fitting in has liberated him as an adult. “My strategy for creative self-renewal” he says “is to be a migrant – dislocated never settled.” He will show how this life philosophy lets us stay curious and questioning and be much more than a fixed self. It allows us to be multiple to be more than one thing to transform and grow. And it frees us to belong to more than one culture place and people at once.; Hussein Chalayan has twice won British Designer of the Year for an extraordinary body of experimental projects. He has made living room furniture that turns into clothes dresses that transform by remote control and a coat with a hidden invitation. His influences range from airport architecture to Samurai rituals to Turkish classical music to Marc Auge and Roland Barthes. His collections have included an experimental film with Tilda Swinton and a performance with Alison Lapper and Michael Clark.; TICKETS: £15.