A manically colorful glamour vibrates through Matty Bovan’s spring ’22 collection. No matter that it’s all built at home: His ingeniously collaged giant crocheted blanket patches, extravagantly pouffed upcycled-fabric ball gowns, and madly unconventional forms of knitting manifestly call to the new youth-wish for ultra-extreme party-dressing.
“I suppose it’s a reaction against last season,” he said on the phone from his studio in York. Last season in Matty-land was a struggle with the sturm and drang of the uncontrollable forces of nature—imagery suggesting high seas and shipwrecks. This one—which he’s named “Hypercraft” —started out with a cache of “hazy family photographs from the 1970s.” Hence his excursion into “granny knitting” and retro-wallpaper patterns culled from vintage Sanderson upholstery fabrics, David Hicks designs, and carpets “reminiscent of The Shining.”
Compared to a year ago, he said, the task of getting things outsourced in the U.K. is more difficult than ever for an independent designer (a talent drain of skilled European workers due to Brexit is partly to blame). But nothing daunted, he declares himself quite happy to be self-sufficient: “I really pushed myself. I’d say 97% of the collection was made in the studio, and I’ve worked again with an amazing knitter locally. There’s always a way if you’re creative.”
As one of the participants in London Fashion Week’s hybridized physical and digital schedule, Bovan is still creating his world long distance via a lookbook and a film. Directed by Ruth Hogben, the video’s a surreally flashing mashup of clothes set against blown-up ’70s dollhouse interiors, with cuckoo clocks going off and grandfather clocks chiming. Bovan says he’s quite happy with experimenting with film, a necessity which he turned into a creative opportunity during the lockdown times. That’s him all over, really—always finding ways to make the best of things. Still, there’s no doubt that London audiences are dying for the moment he decides to bring all that exuberance back to one of his full-on fashion performances again.
