Craig Green’s cerebral designs walk the line between fashion and art and inject soulful poetry into the realities of everyday life.
By MAX BERLINGER
Photography AMY GWATKIN
British designer Craig Green walks a fine line. His work is somehow both, thoroughly grounded in reality and a thought-provoking fantasy. It’s not uncommon for the more extreme examples of his work to look like bubble wrap, or be covered in gravity-defying straps that protrude straight out from the body, or feature hulking wood sculptures that envelop the body like an on-the-go construction site. But no matter what he does, his work demands to be looked at and, more importantly, ruminated on.
Green grew up among craftspeople and builders, and studied fine art in school before venturing into fashion, training at the legendary Central Saint Martins in London, where everyone from Alexander McQueen to John Galliano to Phoebe Philo matriculated. This mix of disciplines shows in his design work, which embraces fashion straight on, but also looks at the possibilities beyond garment-making in the literal sense. The results are, at times, unnerving, confounding, cerebral, and often poetic and elegiac in their beauty and longing for community. Community, in fact, is a central part of Green’s work - an ongoing obsession is uniforms and how they connect people to a sense of belonging.
Green’s brand is just shy of 10 years and yet its reverberations throughout the menswear scene have been strong. His point of view is truly original, one that exists outside of the current archetypes of streetwear or tailoring, looking instead to elevate common utilitarian garments and imbue them with a sense of romance.
Green is quite humble for a man who perhaps best represents the new guard of British fashion. The designer has mixed feelings about the long-standing debate over art versus fashion and has seen an era of tremendous change over his short but impactful career. “Everything can happen and nothing can happen in the space of three months,” he said. “Which is why it’s an exciting and energetic industry to work in.” And yet his work connects with people on many levels - in the strictly sartorial sense, of course, but on a deeper level. It’s the reason why he’s been able to build a thriving business in a relatively short time, as well as work with fashion behemoths like Adidas and Moncler.
“I’m not sure I see myself as a fashion designer or an artist. I don’t think it’s art… I guess it is fashion more than art. It’s a hard thing to distinguish. I’ve just always liked to make things. That’s where it comes from. I get as excited about textiles as I do building something as I do making a jacket. That’s why I’ve always had an excitement to do fashion, because it can be all of those things. One week you can be working with a commercial brand, helping interpret their aesthetic, the next week you’re making a jacket from scratch. I’ve always been curious about how things work. I shy away from the idea of being an artist and then I wonder if I’m a fashion designer. So, somewhere in between? Maybe you can be both.”