London’s short-lived heat wave may have come to an end outside Saul Nash’s spring 2024 show on Monday afternoon, but inside the Institute of Contemporary Arts, where he staged his show, it was all sun, sea and sound of the waves with a backdrop of a Disney-like sky with a wooden boat parked on the sand.
This was a response to a DNA test he took months ago, where the results showed him “multiple layers” to himself.
His mother is of Guyanese and Bajan heritage, while his father is Mauritian and English.
“This collection kind of looks at those intersections through the sea and water sports. It has quite an aquatic feel to it. There’s this parallel of wetsuits and this idea of growing up in London, but then when you visit these countries, you take the things you’d wear in London and you kind of stick out like a sore thumb, but you’re going back to a place where you you relate to,” said the designer in a preview interview with WWD.
Flap collars, zip-through sports jackets, tank tops, casual shirts and beach towels in an array of reds, oranges, pinks and blues could be sampled from the set’s backdrop.
True to Nash’s show nature, his models walked, sat, swayed and danced on the sand. The production budget was higher this season, making everything more believable for the audience without them having to try too hard to understand the designer’s vision.
“There’s also the question of, ‘What would I wear?’ in different contexts, that feeds into when I’m designing or building the collection,” he explained, adding that he collaborated with Soul Cap, a swimming cap brand that caters to “ethnic hair.”
