After three years living and working overseas in some place much wetter, colder, and decrepit than Australia, home-grown talent Garth Cook has decided to once again grace us with his presence. (West Australians – can’t trust ‘em. Always trooping off to cultured places to “further their careers” and “work underneath the design greats”.)
Garth impressed at the start of this year with his debut collection at RAFW as part of the cult New Generation show. In the past, he’d got his fashiony hands on some helpful moolah (such as for winning the Emerging Designer Award at STYLEAID 2009), and fine tuned his skills in London under names like Mario Shwab and Hasam el Odeh.
Schwab’s not known for colouring inside the lines, with complex, rearranged and structured pieces being the norm. It appears this wayward attitude has rubbed off on our WA boy: he now clearly doesn’t know what a protractor looks like.
His Spring Summer 2010-11 collection
Amorphous Geometrics is highly constructed yet also highly deconstructed. (Yes, we are aware that we make absolutely no sense what-so-ever sometimes). Structured pieces are jazzed up with unexpected draping, fine organza ruffles, and double layering. It's like puffy clouds or a trail of ciggie smoke, interjected with a couple of squares.
Of course, this all makes sense when you consider the carefully chosen name in his collection’s title: Amorphous. It means something that “lacks definite form or specific shape”. Not that we had to use a dictionary to figure out what the hell it meant.. From what we can deduce, it’s simply something your up-tight geometry teacher would most definitely not approve of.
She may, however, approve of Garth’s gold pants. They are amazing.
More
here.