Gareth Pugh Fall 2009

After just a few short season's English designer Gareth Pugh has quite ferociously created a strong and powerful aesthetic that's all his own. Taking cues from London's dark, gothic inspired club kids and the work of Rick Owens, Pugh has ultimately created a name for himself with a daring aesthetic that also channels the legendary work of Leigh Bowery. His collections are blatantly hardcore, tough and reminiscent of Mad-Max with their sci-fi undertones combined with serious punk elements and hardware. For Fall 2009 he changed his presentation from runway to video format, a move that we think highlighted the beauty of his silouhettes and gave the clothing a less severe somewhat organic feel. While these looks were definitely not for the jeans & tee-shirt crowd, Pugh does remind us of an old-school designer in the sense that he is creating an entirely new controlled lifestyle. These clothes are beautiful of course, but the true challenge is in the fact that they aren't everyday clothes for running errands lets say, and that they require a totally precise and pure sense of aesthetic direction for the wearer. If anything, one could say that Pugh is the one & only one making clothing that's this extraordinarily dark, menacing yet substantial and somehow totally relevant for today.