Minimalissimo

Berayah SS16

fashion

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Especially in a fast-paced design environment like fashion, it is important for creatives to constantly hark back to their most personal inspirations, their own story, to stay confident and idiosyncratic. This means opening up in a way that can be quite challenging.

For Hong Kong-based womenswear designer Enoch Ho this means relying on his faith. So what he did is create a label by the name of Berayah, which is a transliteration of the Hebraic word Beraiah, meaning God has created. And the SS16 collection reflects Enoch Ho’s beliefs while also transferring them into something completely new, something that doesn’t need to evoke a feeling of actual belief in its wearer, but will nevertheless always be deeply touching.

What Enoch does is sublime. Not only are his designs minimal, he also follows the concept of belief through to the most basic principles, the all-encompassing human emotions which are naturally connected to his faith. Then, he finds his own way of expressing those through his medium, the clothes he creates. In this case Enoch Ho was also deeply inspired by the painting series The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani by abstract expressionist artist Barnett Newman. The so-called zips, the horizontal stripes from Newmans paintings, are transferred into minimalist colour blocks, pleats and and straight seam lines. The silhouettes seem to be a canvas while still flattering the human body dressed in the clothes. The colours are contrasting but light, and the artwork of the look book emphasises the balance between approaching eternal feelings, while constantly creating something new, ideas in progress.

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