Gareth Pugh Collaborates With Nick Knight On Return To Fashion

published on 16 September 2020

The designer teamed up with Nick Knight and digital artist Jon Emmony for their new project 'The Reconstruction'.

The designer teamed up with Nick Knight and digital artist Jon Emmony for their new project 'The Reconstruction'.

Following a two year hiatus from the official Paris schedule, Gareth Pugh is back. Today, the designer launches their new collection via The Reconstruction, a multidisciplinary art project celebrating the connections between fashion, music and film. To mark the occasion, Pugh teamed up with long-standing friend and collaborator Nick Knight, and visual artist Jon Emmony, on a visual concept album and series of digital landscapes. The project also features a documentary revealing the inspirations behind the collection, created by Pugh's husband and co-creative director Carson McColl. Christie's in London will be housing a live exhibition across London Fashion Week featuring key looks from the collection alongside Knight’s imagery, opening Thursday 17 September 2020. The Reconstruction is non-profit project, with all proceeds going directly to Refuge, a U.K charity supporting victims of domestic violence.

Photograph Nick Knight
"Right now, there are no rules. There are no limits. We are being offered an opportunity to invent the future." Gareth Pugh

Pugh is well known for creating unforgettable spectacles, both on the runway and in fashion film. From back in 2009 when SHOWstudio live-streamed Pugh constructing a fantastical garment in real time, to Knight's fashion films and editorials over the years featuring the designer's collections which have transported us to new worlds, The Reconstruction sees SHOWstudio and Knight's on-going collaborative relationship with Pugh realise something even more spectacular than ever before. Featuring 13 looks inspired by 13 iconic songs, Knight has created 13 corresponding images and fashion shorts. The garments, which take Pugh's magnificent, architectural construction techniques to dazzling new heights, are also featured in Emmony's digital landscapes. None of the looks from the collection will go up for sale, instead Pugh has re-imagined them in a limited-edition jersey capsule collection featuring a series of prints designed by Pugh in collaboration with emerging designer Melissa Mehrtens, to launch on HIT + RUN, a platform promoting a zero-waste retail model, available to buy here.

Pugh's behind-the-scenes dream team also includes stylist Katie Shillingford, make-up artist Ana Takahashi, hair stylist Isaac Poleon and nail artist Lauren Michelle Pires. At the project's core? A riotous cast of activists and change-makers; musicians Rina Sawayama and IAMDDB, artist and activist Sakeema Crook, The Royal Ballet’s principal dancer Matthew Ball, artist and performer Jenny Bastet, dancers Travis Clausen-Knight and James Pett, model and muse Maggie Maurer, performers and nightlife icons Finn Love and Georgie Bee and models Jade o’Belle and Georgia Moot.

Explore the project in full here.

Digital landscape Jon Emmony

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