Tuesday 9 December 2008

Jaiden rVa James S/S 09 Press
















Fashion 156

S/S 09 Spanish Mod

Upon graduating from two of Britain’s most respected artistic educational institutions. Jaiden rVa James was Born, when the minds of two young creative’s Rasharn de Vera Agyemang & Jaiden James came together. The labels aim is to deliver contemporary menswear, cutting edge but always wearable designs and to respect and explore the male anatomy. A shirt is never just a shirt nor is trousers just trousers. Exploring each garment differently and understanding how the fit and cut are at the utmost importance on relation to the wearer’s body. The aim is to capture the Zeitgeist of fashion each season and always create extremely well made timeless pieces.

S/S 09 is the 3rd season for Jaiden rVa James, ‘We decided we wanted to use a print or pattern that wasn’t too brash but neither to subtle and we thought Gingham was definitely in the middle, the colours we used remind us of lightness and typically the English summer which is light fresh and airy at the best of times.

On a recent visit to Spain we fell in love with the countries poetic landscape, the amazing beauty of the people but what caught our attention mostly was the youth culture. Although most things in Spain captivated us what amazed us most was the tale of young boy named Juan. His father was a Matador; he wanted to be an artist and spent most of his time painting. He hated the fact that an animal was slaughtered purely to quench the thirst in many for blood and guts. He didn’t want to follow in his fathers footsteps, so we imagined that he ran away to London, when London was in its prime in the 1960’s and got caught on the last fringes of the Mod culture.

The collection is largely made up of the popular Mod pattern Gingham, a Red Gingham shirt contrasted with a black collar, cuffs and slanted pockets, a Turquoise gingham shirt contrasted on the collar, upper & lower pockets and cuffs with plain Turquoise fabric, Linen Turquoise straight fit trousers , Plain Red shorts with red Gingham on the waistband, back pockets & cuffs, high waist Lilac gingham trousers colour blocked at the crouch to the upper waist with pale plain Pink fabric, cropped pale Pink gingham jacket contrasted on collar and breast pockets with plain Lilac fabric and a Black Gingham safari jacket contrasted on collar and lower & upper pockets with plain Black fabric.

“The Contrast of colours and patterns mirrors that of are amazement of the contrast between sublime beauty to the gory lust for blood. The dark poetry between the graceful matador and the enraged bull, who both partake in a dark dance one knowingly and one unknowingly, purely to entertain with one or the other losing life. What shocked us was the majority of the youths of Spain that we came across attitudes towards the bull fight. Juan was a typically good example with most of the young Spaniards interested in music, dance, technology , arts and the normal things teenagers like to get up to opposed to watching the bull being slaughtered.

For S/S 09, Jaiden rVa James worked closely with Kickers to develop a shoe for the season. We decided to Choose the companies iconic rounded, chunky sole, 5 eyelet Kick-hi boot. Reworking the standard leather in Red Patent contrasted with Purple stitching and laces. ‘ We are delighted to have had the fantastic opportunity of working with Kickers, a brand with an amazing heritage and which was a big part of our childhood as we both wore the kick hi to school and continue to wear them’.

Jaiden and Rasharn would like to thank Charlie Porter, Matt Vines, Ellie @ kickers, Brett Lloyd for Photography, Raphael Castelmezzano for styling and many others who have offered us guidance and support.

1 comment:

Style Canteen said...

hello..! I peeked your S/S collection at Cube. I'm a fan of gingham so I was naturally curious.
Nice to see you blogging too!