Profoundly influenced by nostalgia and the resilience of memories both emotional and physical, Dean Sidaway’s new collection of intelligent and complex pieces tell the story of a couple that go missing. Their disappearance, going largely unnoticed, leads to a slow decomposition of their life, their furniture and their house, and it is this aesthetic that underpins each delicate object created for his S/S11 collection, “The Widows”.
Sidaway’s pieces very often lean towards being multiple-sensory experiences. He prefers to work with materials that have tactility and texture with an emphasis on the natural, making you yearn to entwine your fingers around each strand of hair or twist of rope. Sound is also something that is considered in the conception stage of the designs. Sidaway accentuates how the materials interact with each other, considering the noises each different material will make together, witnessed to full effect in his Atlas piece from the 2010 collection. A feeling of childish glee overcomes you as you hear the sound of the white ceramic balls sewn onto the shoulder pieces as they knock together.
All his pieces from collections past and present have emanated a certain fragility, which has fed into how they’re perceived and created. Sidaway loves the idea of using materials and objects not necessarily associated with fashion – brown paper, wicker, household and domestic objects, ruffled layers of untreated paper that when worn, photographed and handled then undergo a natural evolution. Most remarkably, Sidaway is not precious about his objects. Almost like Duchamp, he accepts and almost encourages the natural progression of his pieces, enjoying their transformation through handling and use as they begin to degrade slowly and fall apart.
The current collection will feature pieces juxtaposing aging and worn fabrics and materials with lush and luxe textiles and detail. Predominately, the collection took inspiration from the discoloured and outmoded prints of ‘chintzy’ wallpaper backed onto leather, infusing the pieces with a feeling of nostalgia and romanticism. Although still under construction when I went to visit his East London Studio, a highlight was a grandiose capelet constructed of layers of pale sun-bleached bunting attached to old yellowed lace curtains. With a partiality for found objects , Sidaway constructs a Lariat neck piece from a rococo picture frame, its faded glamour causing a sudden feeling of loss. There is an aura around his pieces, a feeling of inscribed memory which makes them so powerful. The missing couple are no longer missing. They have been found within his collection of striking accessories.
Seeing himself as a maker of unusual one-off ‘things’ very much encapsulates the way each wonderfully unique piece has been created for this collection. Sidaway is a part of Blow Presents, which he finds altogether inspiring and wonderful to be a part of. A piece of his was featured recently in the Black Eyed Peas “Imma Be” video atop Fergie’s fierce shoulders, alongside his fellow Blow Presents designer Gemma Slack. He says he would like to get more music videos, relishing their immediacy and the fusion of sensory experience that a combination of aesthetic and aural heightens the experience of the clothes.
His latest, beautiful collection can be seen at:
http://www.deansidaway.com/collections.aspx
Photography by Alastair Strong
