For his latest collection, Christopher Kane went into suburban behind-closed-doors kinkiness, revisiting his school memories of being taught about reproduction in nature and life-drawing classes for his Lover’s Lace collection.
This time, despite the current charged atmosphere around who has permission to do what to whom, Kane said he and his sister, Tammy, considered it and felt they wanted to go ahead:
“We thought, ‘No, what’s wrong with it?’ We wanted to look at it from the joy point of view—to empower and strengthen that female force.”
The Joy of Sex, the 1972 illustrated manual of positions and techniques by Alex Comfort, which became a publishing blockbuster in the age of sexual liberation (and which remains ever-popular in its more recent updates), was the starting point. Kane gained permission to reuse one or two drawings by one of the book’s original illustrators, Chris Foss, as prints.
But with his experience and design development prowess, there is always a broad and chic spectrum on his runway, too. Black leather turned up as a subtle accent on coat lapels, or cut into diamanté-fringed minidresses. Paneled, vertically zippered dresses put the possibilities of displaying or concealing into the hands of the wearer, according to their mood.
