Coinciding with London Fashion Week, Rui Leonardes will present ‘Asylum’ at NL – The Dutch Cultural Pop-Up Space in London.

Taking the form of an installation rather than a traditional showroom or catwalk show, ‘Aylum’ will see Leonardes presenting his conceptual approach to fashion as a unified exhibition, albeit one that will include pieces from his latest collections.

Drawing on diverse cinematic influences such as Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ (1979) and Wim Wenders’ cult 1987 film ‘Wings of Desire‘ (Der Himmel über Berlin), ‘Asylum’ will see Rui Leonardes transforming the space into something at the intersection of installation art and fashion.

About Rui Leonardes

Originally from the Azores, Rui Leonardes moved to the Netherlands at the age of 17, initially to Rotterdam to train as a dancer. Once settled in the Netherlands, however, Rui’s fascination with fashion got the better of him. He trained as a designer at the Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam. Later he continued his post-graduate training at London’s respected Cordwainers College before moving on to the Royal College of Art, where his focus on footwear earned him a lot of attention, graduating with a collection that gained him critical and media praise.

Though known primarily as a conceptual designer and a designer of highly individual showpieces – for example, he has designed specific pieces for pop groups such as Arctic Monkeys and The Mystery Jets- Leonardes has nonetheless also worked as a designer in the more commercial arena of fashion. For example, he worked as a menswear designer for Nina Ricci; also at Nikos, the iconic brand that has been the subject of recent renewed interest in the way that it reinvented underwear as accessible luxury in the mid-1980’s. More recently he has been invited by Ann Demeulemeester to produce shoe designs for forthcoming collections.

More About Rui Leonardes’ Work
” Leonardes is one of that small group of designers whose work, whilst unashamedly disinterested in the notion of fashion as a practical thing, nonetheless shows precision in the craft of its construction; its cutting and tailoring. This is important since it is a quality that makes his work unique.

One observation might be that Leonardes seems to be hardly interested in fashion in and of itself at all but sees it rather as the medium through which to explore conceptual ideas and positions, working more akin to a visual artist who deploys imagery of fashion to other ends. For example, his high-heels for men, his body bags with high heels or works from his collection entitled DBC (Death By Crucifixion), inspired by Alexander Rodchenko’s book “10 days in Uzbekistan" often seem to be far more interested in communicating discourses other than ‘order me’ to the VIP buyers in the front row. Indeed, the DBC collection was even presented in a format at London Fashion Week in 2006 that speaks of Leonardes’ affinity with the methods of art rather than the orthodoxies of fashion. Eschewing a straightforward catwalk presentation, the collection was presented by an inverted means; as an installation featuring a film and the life-size drawings from which he subsequently produced the collection in which the conceptual and gestural qualities of his work were foregrounded over the end product.

Similarly, within his work the gender-bending qualities of the recurrent image of men in high-heeled shoes, the macabre (and yet oh-so-camp) image of the body bags with high heels or the more recent work in which the echoes of Surrealism see a man’s head –one can hardly call it a hat- morph into a working traffic light, all speak of an intent to communicate ideas rather than sell clothes. And these ideas vary from the trippy imagination of a dream to highlighting the psychosocial conflict of gender roles or to a bemused parody of fads in fashion.

In one collection, for example, the penchant of certain street fashions seems to be the starting point. The tight skinny jeans of the Shoreditch kids and the low-slung, bum crack exposing jeans of the skater boys meld into Leonardes’ designs in which both aspects are highlighted and yet become something entirely different. The resulting garment, in which both influences are still clear, becomes more skirt-like through the exaggerated dropped crotch and distinctly feminine in flowing straight into high-heel shoes. The wannabe machismo of the emphasised zip crotch, with a clear whiff of the leather queen in the leather version, undeniably parodies aspirations to masculinity.

Cue Bobby-O soundtrack and sing, “You think you’re a man, but you’re only girl. And you’re not enough of either to satisfy me!”

Yet, for all this tongue-in-cheek critique, all this refusal to play ball with many of the tenets of fashion, Rui Leonardes’ work is guaranteed additional impact by exactly the precise application of the fashion skills that he has spent years honing. The garments, ultimately remaining impractical or at odds with dominant social aspirations of consumers, are nonetheless seductive. Their cut is flattering; they are groomed, tailored. Leonardes’ ultimate conceit is that he can actually make us look good whilst clothing us in a critique of fashion codes and seeking public approval through what we wear.”

Curators’ text from ‘Taut – That Certain Tension Between Fashion & Art’ curated by Ken Pratt & Laurent Domborwicz, Brussels, April 2010.