Craig Yellow? Craig Orange? Craig Green at London Collections: Men SS16

No current menswear designer has a bigger weight on their shoulders, quite like Craig Green has. Both a recent CSM Menswear graduate and Lulu Kennedy's MAN graduate, on Friday 12th June and also the opening day of London Collections: Men saw Craig Green present what would be his third, yes you heard correctly, only his third solo career fashion show. And what a show it was. But not only that, Green has had quite a remarkable past few months, he's had garments exhibited at New York's Metropolitan Museum part of it's latest instalment "China Through The Looking Glass" and also now has a campaign photographed in collaboration with legendary image-maker Nick Knight. For Spring/Summer 2016 Craig Green finally made more use out of his last name, introducing a whole hue of colours to his usual minimalistic, muted down and drawn-back approach to art and design. The future is bright for such a calm, humble and fully deserving Craig Green.

For the first time in his career Craig Green introduced womenswear into his collection. I remember reading somewhere that he thought that women had always looked better in his menswear clothes than men did, so it made sense he introduce it to collection. I was glad to see Craig Green re-introduce his re-invented workwear jacket and his modernised sumo-cum-karate-tied numbers, which happen to be my favourite pieces of his. His off-white first looks reflected on his early creations, which paid wonderful homage to what made him the designer he is today, other than the extremely hard work he's put in. The designer also incorporated the aspect that put him on the fashion map a couple years back, his art-like structures. This time they were hand-held fabric and wood panels that covered not only the face but the front of the torso (backs were visible) and right down past the knees. Because they were stretched, faces could vaguely be seen creating a ghostly figure, which I found interesting and intriguing. They came in red, white and black. A silent protest if you will. Remember last season's circular holes in the jumpers? That Lou Stoppard so perfectly related to that butterfly feeling in your stomach? Well they were seen once again and at times were doubled and quite sexually and quite cheekily placed on models nipples. In fact some even had a "nipple-twisted" effect which not only myself adored, but a lot of fashion insiders described them as the jumpers of the season. It was only so long before Craig Green could show an entire collection without shoes on the models (bare feet an socks in the past) so I'm made up shoes featured in SS16. As I touched on before, the colours used for Spring and Summer were amazing, vibrant, tropical and citrusy but far from cliché with canary yellows, flaming reds, penitentiary oranges and grass greens. They made the collection balanced and fresh (no pun intended) from archived ghosts of Central Saint Martins' past to fit for 2016. Green was slightly criticised for already referencing his past, with only having a total of seven collections I think (including his graduate collection) to his name, but for me if it feels like the right moment to do so, then do it and I thought it was the perfect moment. Another great addition to the Craig Green house.

Images courtesy of WWD and Style.com

I've been working on my FMP sketchbook all weekend right up to 7am Monday morning when I get up at 7:45...So I'm still recovering from that and that is the reason for lack of blog posts, but I am finished with that now. So yeah sorry about that. Craig Green Autumn/Winter 2015 will always hold a place in my heart as my favourite collection to date, but nevertheless this was an incredible collection and I honestly don't feel the need to comment anything more on a final note other than just keep doing what you're doing Craig Green.

The Wolf of High Street

xxx