Song For The Mute Look To Beetlejuice and Retro Horror For New Collection
Song For The Mute are back with their latest collection 21.2 Beast Narrative. A continuation from last season which drew from Naïve art, the Australian label's latest offering was inspired by a penchant for retro horror. Creative director Lyna Ty's partner and artistic collaborator Karim Gaaloul's obsession with 1980's and 90's horror films and TV shows underpin the collection's focus on a sense of unease.
The scary movies Dracula, E.T, Beetlejuice and Evil Dead all found themselves on Song For The Mute's mood board this season. A chalky white palour and Beetlejuice's static hair can be spotted in both the men's and women's lookbooks, however the biggest takeaway is the sense of something not being quite right. Whether that be the unease of a horror film so tacky it's not scary at all, or the uncertainty of someone lying in the shadows, 21.2 Beast Narrative is about finding the disconcerting appealing.
From their chalky windswept coiffures to stark expressions, the childlike sense of play from last season here gets darker. Inspired also by TV shows and children's amusement parts - think those reality bending mirror mazes - the menswear and womenswear collections on offer this season take a childlike sense of play and reframe it, in unhinged adult form. The same fabrics are used across the two presented via lookbooks. Seen through a naive light, they're layered, put together in patchwork, reframed and jolted as silky textures jar with rough surfaces, finished with furry clogs and desert boots that bring to mind Maurice Sendak's illustrations for his children's 1963 tale Where The Wild Things Are. Plaids and checks are in abundance across work jackets and shirting, cut through by burnt orange satins and chaotic finishings - hems frayed and the markings of Gaaloul's artworks screen-printed onto fabrics.
'From her he creates a mask he moulds and sculpts and carries and wears and admires. This was his naivety, to create something beautiful from something ugly and forgotten or even rejected.'
The Sydney-based label, who produce everything in Australia, here present the female and male narratives more seperately than ever before. Defined by their contrasting grey and white backgrounds in the lookbook, each are defined as their own individual unhinged characters, leaving the viewer in want of more.
