On exhibit: The return of Miguel Adrover
LONDON:
Miguel Adrover, the designer who disappeared from the fashion radar
since he left New York three years ago, is making a comeback.
Adrover, 41, now based in his native Majorca, is not only taking
part in "New York Fashion Now," an exhibition that opens on Tuesday at
London's Victoria & Albert museum. The designer with a strong
social agenda is also in discussions with a global fashion company,
according to information circulating in London.
Reached in Majorca, Adrover would not discuss any future plans but
said that he had relocated his studio to Palma de Mallorca, where he
has built up a private clientele, as well as creating recycled
clothing, following his long-term "green" aesthetic.
"For me it has been a good time to think and analyze and make the
philosophy of the company more understandable," says the designer.
Given Adrover's exceptional tailoring skills and creative
intelligence, it has been a mystery why he was not chased by European
houses after he left America
The designer went to New York in 1991, set up Horn boutique in
Manhattan's East Village in 1995, and founded his own label in 1999. In
the forefront of fighting fashion's global, logo-mad culture, he
famously made elegant clothes by recycling a ticking mattress and a
Burberry raincoat. His show of multicultural clothing with Arab
inspiration was later viewed as a prescient vision of terrorist events.
Adrover won critical acclaim and awards for collections that he
showed once a year. But after his backer, Pegasus Group, withdrew, he
was forced to close his studio with his last collection for
spring/summer 2005.
Sonnet Stanfill, the curator of the V & A show, uses Adrover as
an example of the difficulty of setting up in fashion, while
celebrating the fact that 20 designers emerged in New York between
1999-2004, including current names such as Proenza Schouler and Zac
Posen.
Adrover, who opened his own space in Majorca and counts art,
photography and poetry among his interests, is still doubtful about big
brand fashion.
"In the way we see clothing, we have lost the sense of the
industry," he says. "We have lost contact with reality and it needs to
change."
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