“How do you do it to always look so good in photos?”
“Oh, I just like, never smile.”
“OUCH! Someone in heels just stepped on my foot.”
“It’s so packed, good luck seeing anything.”
“Quiet! It’s starting.”
A soft beat starts to play and the attendees to the Autumn/Winter 2019 presentation by Malaysian designer Cassey Gan stop in their hushing and fidgeting.
Smartphones are held in the air and apologies are muttered as guests try to get closer to the stage. On such a grey February day as today, nobody wants to miss a second of the colourful and vibrant patterns on Gan’s creations.
The models move around the stage, nonchalantly looking around as if they were the only human beings in the room. As if they didn’t feel the pressure of hundreds of eyes staring at their clothes.
Is clothes even the right word? From their confident posture and attitude, one could have said it’s golden armors what they’re wearing, instead of pieces of fabric.
But “ready for battle” is not Gan’s modus operandi. Her designs do not speak of defiance, but of comfort and confidence. These are garments that could easily be described as “futuristic”, yet their forms and movement suggest a sort of timelessness that has nothing to do with simplicity.
It is as I am trying to hold my phone higher to take a photo of a beautifully deconstructed, balloon-sleeved top that it hits me: Cassey Gan studied engineering before she began her career in fashion, meaning there is no room for randomness in her designs. Her attention to details does not only give away her endless and tremendous passion, but also an affinity for careful calculation and immense patience.
It is funny how these concepts that live on opposite sides of the mirror cohabitate so unproblematically in Cassey Gan’s designs: past and future, old and new, art and science.
Every piece of her Autumn/Winter vision for 2019 feels a bit like architecture, a bit like fashion and a lot like something that is entirely Gan’s own perception of the world.