I always strive to bring the boy out of the girl, and the girl out of the boy. A man and a woman are different in body, but in soul and spirit, we are the same.
A meeting with Alistair Trung falls somewhere between profound fashion insight and holy communion for the soul’s sense of style.
He’s equal parts flamboyant and outspoken yet tempered with drive, desire and a passion to make the human form beautifully fluid and at one with nature.
As such, his garments play with volume and sensuality, billowing pants paired with tops which can be layered and wrapped in multiple ways, sheerness combined with fur and goat hair in winter and feathers in summer.
Minimal, chic, effortless and bold are all words that can describe Trung’s vision. But more than that his work is about freedom – freeing the mind from traditional constraints; freeing the body to move; freeing the soul from self-loathing.
‘This is why I love draping and things that are not static,’ Trung recently told OUTinPerth.
‘Like I always say, forget going on a diet, the clothing will diet for you.
‘I think for me that’s more of an intelligent concept and this is why I always come back to the sari, kimono and Roman robes – all of the grand civilisations have made these very intelligent deductions from this and they have contemplated on very pure shapes that can actually be tied in and hence frees up the body.’
Rather than start with the body, Trung begins with the brain, looking at ways to free up the physical and transcend constraint, particularly by bringing in space and air.
‘Everything I do is about aeration,’ he added.
‘I’m always trying to free up the crotch area, the armpit, the bust line. Any kind of strangulation really actually disturbs me. For me it’s about the need to air.’
Trung’s idea of fashion and style deals with a cultivation of the individual.
‘I think that’s a very important aspect of dressing that we don’t talk about now: it’s always about branding. We constantly get bombarded by this idea of branding and the celebrity aspect, but no-one actually talks about dressing.
‘I think a person who has great style cultivates their mind. There is an intelligence connected to that.
‘You learn how to edit and about aesthetics and that’s how you become really resolved in yourself. And that affects your character. Clothing is a very powerful medium by which to do this.
‘A person who wears a tracksuit for their entire life is more likely to have low self-esteem than a person who actually dresses up and becomes engaged in a cultivation of aesthetics.’
This spring/summer, Trung brings together stones, nudes and stripes in a textural palette of silk georgette, cotton jersey and denim with ostrich feather and waxed turkey feather accessories for accentuation.
‘I think of them as a toy. I love the ease of them,’ said Trung of his accessories.
‘I love how they aren’t attached to anything. You can become a day gladiator or an evening chanteuse. They have the power to transform and it gives you a bit of poetry. Not poultry, poetry.’
Alistair Trung is stocked extensively at S2 as well as Ricarda, Periscope, Mid 70 and Mariko. New season drops mid-September. www.alistairtrung.com.au
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
