Raeburn. Spring 2023 - Copenhagen Fashion Week.
The U.K. fashion designer Christopher Raeburn has proven to be that ultimate reuser of materials, reminding us of the waste that the fashion industry creates. And included within this wastage of mountains of discarded clothing and fabrics are the durable and functional utility wears, from essential service workers, through to the $2 Trillion dollar a year military complex. To which Raeburn predominantly sources for his collections, that being the military and utility surplus materials. With a fascination in militaristic technology, having leant to fly as an Air Cadent when he was younger. Raeburn's awareness of the diuturnal and tough materials used in army and airforce uniforms and technology, has been instilled with renewed ethos for his Spring 2023 collection.
This is Raeburn's first runway show since 2019, skipping the pandemic, like everyone else, while resorting only to a lookbooks for his RAEMADE collection, which utilized the U.K. army's Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM) ala desert camouflage design, pieced together by the indispensable waterproof material Gortex. Raeburn was able to meld an outwear look onto a military-esque urban aesthetic, akin to 1990's street wear styles. Although the styles from the RAEMADE lookbook were limited in scale, Raeburn's Spring 2023 collection has returned to its more stylized and extensive forms, in representing of his sustainable looks.
As one of the finalists for the Zalando Sustainability Award, Raeburn was able to show his latest collection at Copenhagen Fashion Week rather than his usual London Fashion Week shows. Extensively utilizing parachute fabrics as the themed material for the show and so was his abstraction of the various graphic prints, in homage to one of the most beautifully stark military planes ever created, the now retired Blackbird. Raeburn's latest array is less deconstructured than previous collections, but also more functional and modernist in its presentation. Brining back the outwear, mountaineering and military styles which were one of the leading trends of 2018 and 2019. In which one could argue that certain fashion designers, such as Raeburn, foreboded that we all could be entering into an era of survivalism. With clothing that has indeed reflected not just the styles of our time, but also the necessity of wearing outfits that hold a durability and in Raeburn's criteria, recycled materials.
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