The livery produced by father and son Joe and Charlie Casely-Hayford is enarmoured by the Tudor House Wilton House
We find confirmation today in hypnosis. Because the individual does not make contemporary history but rather shapes the expression of his time and expresses his attitude, it is possible to capture a physiognomic portrait of an entire generation and to give it linguistic expression in a photograph […].
The above statement was given via radio broadcast by the renown German photographer August Sander in Cologne in April 1931 entitled ,’Photography as an Universal Language’. In the British house of Casely-Hayford we are confronted by the semblance of a non-confronting man standing or sitting in motionless gaze as if the world that cloisters him is somehow archaistic. The gilded, colossally baroque Wilton House in charges him with being the patriarch leading from William Herbert.
The patriarch is however, unperturbed by the grandeur of his new home. Rather he tries to embrace his residence by coming to terms of the distinguished regality that precedes him. In his modus operandi, he proceeds by enacting on contemporary mobility: activities of sports, lounging and the academic pursuits of literature pictured in one frame of towered books laid beside him.
Joe and Charlie Casely-Hayford (father and son) have built their reputation for a gentleman with savoir-faire but also the air of sartorial anarchy. Sporting pieces from the vocation of British hunting infused with utility and urban sportswear, the breath of fabrication in the use of sheepskin collars and leather trims appear bespoke on a range of re-constructed Harrington jackets. So as to the eloquence not but one but with many social functions where we see the protagonist dressed in the rapture of a cardinal red velvet jacket, a Scottish plaid trouser, the vacuum embossed treatment of an agate padded jacket or simply the emblematic statement of a tartan checked crombie.
The collection titled ‘Day One’ constructs a new membrane of sports and utilitarian fabrics yet remains configured unequivocally in British sartorialism
The intrigue in the Casely-Hayford collection for this automne season is ‘Day One’ represents an amalgam of their past collections melded into its current incarnation. Both father and son described the collection as a whole as, “analyses the effects of the new coalition government on today’s British social hierarchy, through observing key features”. As strictly bounded by a subversion of a British vernacular representative in their collections past (notably of Automne 2010), we can however view Day One in a contrast of light. Father and son construct a perpendicular parallel of past and present which remains contemplative in the clothes. The clothes themselves reflect an aura of memory – the elixir of youth, of tradition and ultimately why the duality of leisurely pursuits and formal dress codes pierce through the heart of formal rebellion. After all this is the maison of Joe and Charlie Casely-Hayford have fortified.
Day One is a testimony to the rarefied uniqueness of a father and son tailoring partnership. Joe apart of the living social fabric in British fashion (having styled bands The Clash and U2), written for The Face and i-D magazine – Charlie written for i-D magazine and the Creative Review they both express a dialogue of utility and mobility. This is their physiognomy.
Casely-Hayford – www.casely-hayford.com
