“I always look at my garments as a three-dimensional sculpture as opposed to a flat jigsaw puzzle,” Max Tan said, in retrospect to conceptualizing his new Spring Summer 2014 collection. That, in a nutshell, is a rite of passage from designer to visionary.
Still, at a young age, the avant-garde influences are evident in his works and yet he seeks out other inspirations in this latest advent in the Singapore fashion industry. How many designers can you entrust this burden of leading the pack?
Those intuitive feelings surface when watching this offering off Digital Fashion Week 2013 and the almost melancholic magic will always give him an edge over detractors.
Max Tan favors clean geometric silhouettes over romantic getups. Employing the use of asymmetry, he whips up a string of tent shirts, bustier dresses and languid jumpsuits with flopping collars.
Skirts were voluminous and reconstructed shirts trail off in the wind. But then Max Tan exercised control, fabric strategically tucked to form origami couture – it was as wearable as anything else at Digital Fashion Week.
The pervasive principle of the collection was avant garde meets Hedi Slimane. It was implicit in the gilded belts, floppy French hats paired with Rick Owens-fashioned footwear. But there were also deconstructed patched shirts that presented a restrained array of shapes.
Max Tan had taken cue from biblical references of Eve (having been made from a rib of Adam) and transmuted the lore of Genesis to a present day wardrobe. It hints of feminist dogma with inspirations drawn from menswear.
And, because there’s always a darker subtext, the innately haunting visions evoke Lilith as well. A revel in the part Amish sombre poetry is what makes Max Tan’s works so alluring.
Photography by Ee Shuen
