'Clothes you want to climb into, to run away in' - how lockdown inspired designer Richard Malone's new collection

Wexford-born Malone admits his hand was impacted by a “warped and dismantled sense of time” during the intense quiet of lockdown.

However, thankfully he found expression with dramatic ruching and exaggerated shapes in gleaming velvets in his latest body of work which he calls ‘Rehearsal.’

With 21 looks, Malone has ticked a lot of boxes for next season. There's ochre bouclé tailoring with double belts achieving tilting angles across the body. Short, off-the-shoulder ruched dresses, narrow legged pant suits with peaked sleeves, double laced corset tops, silver blue crushed velvet blouses and silk-like wool crêpes

Creative but above all ultra practical and hands on, Richard literally rolled his sleeves up and the stunning, light reflective velvets were hand-washed by him in his own bath.The collection features a significant amount of Irish linen past-season off-cuts and allows the young, award winning designer explore the concept of clothes rendered entirely abstract. Clothing as props, within a life reimagined.His latest work was very well received on Saturday when a 14 minute film and 21 images were revealed on day two of London Fashion Week SS21.

Of late, Malone has been playing with the concept of draped chairs in the same fabric of his clothes and for SS21, he executed what he likes to call “upholstered, substantial evening.”

The pieces have a touch of old Hollywood glamour with their high necklines cut away to reveal the shoulders.

His thrilling and siren-like ruching snakes out from a central seam to drape a woman's curves. Next season, you find exaggerated shoulders, as if fixed in a permanent, peculiar shrug and dramatic drapery and “rounded, cushion-y hips.”

Winner of the coveted Woolmark prize last February, within a few weeks, he was in lockdown.

Remaining in London at his home near Hackney Marshes, Malone got thinking about “what does design-for-real-life look like, when the world screeches to a halt?”

He found “solace in an armoury of gorgeous, weighty, almost-upholstered, substantial evening-wear and he end result is very pleasing and undoubtedly one of his most wearable collections for years.

Returning to the notion of armour, he describes musings around “the armour of character.” The inevitable sense of self-preservation that comes with staying true to who you are. Malone’s signature realness ultimately stands firm. His trousers have a terrific 70s vintage vibe, their bell bottom lines emphasised by the slim line tunic above.

A story teller in his own right, Malone explained how two books remained within his reach throughout the design process. There were: I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat.