Richard Malone

Richard Malone‘s spring-summer 2022 garments, made in part using fragments of materials, including scrap leather provided by Mulberry, were presented among Raphael cartoons at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. These artworks, intended to hang in the Vatican, are Renaissance treasures; within the usual hierarchy of art, they are more highly valued than fashion design. Who and what “counts” and/or is represented in art and fashion is a subject that preoccupies Malone, who became increasingly interested in Irish craft heritage and its relationship to place and language during lockdown. “I’ve really been thinking about being an immigrant in this country, coming here on my own and building this business, and then what gets to be celebrated and what we get to talk about,” the designer said in a pre-show chat. Without the possibility to engage in person with his team, spring’s collection was not built on conversations or a moodboard but out of nostalgia. The circular forms that appear throughout the collection were specifically inspired by the celebratory, decorative rosettes (resembling scrunchies, observed Malone) and armbands that the designer’s grandmother would carefully assemble by hand to commemorate horse meets and wins by the Gaelic Athletic Association. Home crafted with care, these happy, colorful rounds commemorate quotidian, humble joys. As such they stood in contrast to the monumental and classical narratives of the Raphael cartoons, which, to Malone, represent “good taste,” and perhaps also social class. “It fascinates me that my starting point was that very simple thing,” he said. During lockdown “I really got to assess what the meaning of making those things is, and what putting them in a space like the V&A and trying to make them elevated and interesting could mean. I think sometimes when you go to museums or you go to fashion stores, you can feel quite ashamed of your upbringing not being very conversationally valuable. Now I’m like, ‘Oh no, that’s the most valuable thing that I have.’” As an outsider, Malone brings a sense of realness and proportion (in the sense that he is committed to keeping his production runs small) to the smoke and mirrors world of fashion. The setting of his show, the designer noted, “really heightened the fact that a lot of fashion is imitation, or it isn’t real life.” But that’s a dichotomy that also plays out in his own work: “There’s one side of what I do that’s quite theatrical and abstract, but then there’s also the real women that buy clothes from me, and men, and they’re such two different conversations,” he observed. “There is more than one truth in everything.” Malone delivered on the drama with his finale looks, which might be described as “window dressing” as they seemed to frame the models as curtains do a window. These seemed to pay homage to the drapery-heavy campaign the designer created for Mulberry, with whom he is collaborating this season as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary. In addition to putting his own spin on classic Mulberry bag silhouettes, Malone used traceable leather provided by the company in his collection, and much of the jersey was salvaged from the above-mentioned ad. Old and new, precious and humble, these dichotomies were present throughout the collection. Materials usually reserved for sampling, like horsehair, were retained for the finished garments. Malone introduced menswear for spring, with a focus on bolero jackets and apron pants. Rounds predominated, and Malone brought his designs full circle, as it were, via different paths. Some looks, like the cutout jackets, considered the circle as a negative space, for example; in contrast, draping built out and gave dimensionality to the shape. “I work like a builder in a corner of my studio,” said Malone. He finds joy in making; in the set of a sleeve, the importance of cut, the language of fabric. “All I’m trying to do,” he said, “is build something that is personal and real.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Who would have ever known, that during confinement, when our clothes were all about lazy-wear, one could come up with such beautiful refinement? Richard Malone, the Irish designer, brought back elegance to London Fashion Week, done in his signature, sustainable way. It was those months which became the genesis for the spring-summer 2021 collection, a period when, even without a team or regular resources at his disposal, he had the luxury of time: the opportunity to rifle through deadstock materials and hand-dye them in his bathtub, or tie them with twine and run them through his washing machine to achieve the right crinkled effect. “Because my language is very much making, perhaps lockdown wasn’t so bad for me,” he noted. “I could just do whatever I wanted in my studio. It was a distraction.” DIY as it was, the luxurious feeling that Malone came up with is just so refreshing: velvets dramatically draped into floor-sweeping Grecian numbers; discarded theater curtains cut into body-con glamour or gathered around padded bustles. “They’re fabrics that lend themselves to lounging—the velour is like Juicy Couture tracksuit material,” he smiles. “It’s comfortable; it’s loungewear.” He was clearly going for a sense of comfort in the armor of sutured breastplates and the padding of cushioned hips. “It wasn’t intentional but I was trying everything on as I designed it and I suppose it was in response to the moment,” he reflects (Malone has always worked as his own fit model in the formative stages of his collections). “I hadn’t worn shoes for three months. Everything, the very idea of clothes, felt abstract.” The abundant historical allusions, too, were instinctual rather than referential. Without access to research libraries, “I was reliant on the guise of memory,” he says. “And I read a lot of books about time: Iain Reid, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Ali Smith… I was interested in the idea of how all these different time periods can somehow exist at once.” Cropped and gathered matador boleros, their shoulders warped into shrugs, evolved from the idea that “everything’s sort of fucked, so you shrug and you move on” rather than the usual archival imagery; corseted lace-up backs from the simple fact that Malone was having to somehow strap himself into the more elaborate numbers. Sometimes, the simplicity of an accident brings the most spectacular effects.