KIKO KOSTADINOV

Men’s Spring Summer 2022

Introspective reflections on displacement and diaspora have imbued Kiko Kostadinov’s Men’s Spring Summer 2022 collection with an unprecedented sense of longing - one shared by many in a year fraught with geopolitical upheaval. That longing: for movement and freedom, for expression and catharsis, manifests in a collection that unpacks a lifetime of curiosity, questioning boundaries and the dynamics of an outsider in Post-Brexit London.

The push vs. pull of inertia and momentum in our present condition occupies much of the season’s parcours, extending the brand’s design vocabulary into new materiality and proportions whilst paring back expressions of assemblage. Graphic devices and experimental pattern making are the result of investigations into the Futurist movement and its implications in Kostadinov’s native Bulgaria, stemming first from a career-long infatuation with the work of the Italian artist Giacomo Balla and the more recent discovery of his Bulgarian contemporary Nicolay Diulgheroff.

Balla’s abstract expressions of light, movement and speed – from his 1912 masterpiece ‘Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash’ to his Futurist waistcoats – form the foundations of warped tailoring, from spiked patch pocket gilets and deconstructed, sliced shorts to angular two-tone blazers. His Divisionist techniques appear not as patchwork but as layering, in doubled jersey bodybuilding vests that fall into tapered points, bowling shirts with superimposed collars, and modular jackets featuring contrasting, fold-away sleeve shields. Alongside the sulfurous palette of Diulgheroff’s ceramic art, Bulgarian folklore permeates in subtle detailing, from concentric quilting to transparent lace plastrons and traditional head jewellery repurposed as draped sautoirs.