Aitor Throup is a designer who created a unique business framework to make fashion work for him – and within that, there is his own distinct ecology. Throup has no interest in working to the diktats of the seasonal, instead conducting a practice he’s dubbed New Object Research which works on a project-led, conceptual basis.
Realising the artistic potential that comes with getting dressed, this is a designer that has both storified a group of football hooligans transforming into Hindu Gods and responded to the wrongful killing in 2005 of Jean Charles de Menezes with his work. For the first time, his reflections of (and reactions to) society are available commercially, exclusively at Dover Street Market.
"The collaboration is really special for me, it’s been a long time coming," Throup says. "I’ve held back commercially, selling things through retail, and the whole point was to make a statement that I’m not anti-commerce. That’s why I wanted to launch a completely new product, not in my own environment of an art gallery or my own presentation where I can control everything."
It’s an important moment for the designer. After years of refining his practice, the crowning glory – and sublime conclusion – is that fans can now go out and buy Throup's designs. That’s when their meaning is taken to a whole new level. For all the potency of statement, clothing is never better than when it's lived in.
