How many ways can you tie a knot? If you’re Rory William Docherty, one—but for spring, rework it, shrink it, blow it up, flip it, or transmute it with new materiality. For his third consecutive show at London Fashion Week, the New Zealand–based designer honed in and went deep on his specific creative practice by taking one signature design element—the tie lifted from his best-selling painter’s shirt with flopping edges—then let himself be subsumed by the act of making and remaking. “I just started playing a bit, which is how I like to begin, almost forgetting about fashion,” he said.
The framework became about layers. Docherty likes layers. An artist, he will sketch or paint something to be printed on his fabrics later, but here, he went in reverse, making a 3D form by knotting strips of cut newspaper into a ropy cord that hung from the wood chair that became the show’s set. “Then I spent an incredible amount of time meticulously drawing them on very large paper,” he said. “There is something quite—punk is not the right word—but almost mildly obscene about creating something that was knotted together haphazardly and then forcing yourself to meticulously re-create it.” The result was printed onto fluid silk trousers, sheer skirts, asymmetrical scarf tops tied at the neck, and floor-skimming coats. They set the tone for a softer and more sensitive collection, the result of all that deep creative absorption. Chimeric impressions of knots evolved into physical ties, connected to make an oversized openwork latticed skirt or left undone on the neck of a linen cocoon dress. On his more poetic looks, the ties interlinked to make a sweet jumble of multicolors, as on a minidress. For a short jacket, he deployed gilded metal mesh with each tie hand-sewn across the arms and torso, like a school of precious butterflies about to take flight.
Twisted and looping skirts and shirtdresses and ends tied or left loose at will captured that element of the haphazard. It lent the collection a breezy ease, underscored by a calming tinkling of bells that greeted guests as they entered, and a warm beige linen, shot through with Lurex to mimic the sparkle of sand on a sunny day. Intuitive creating begets intuitive dressing, helped along by Docherty’s update of anchoring everday pieces like chinos, oversized trenches, and separates in Japanese cotton ticking.
Returning to the motif, Docherty was asking himself what ties us together, ruminating on chosen family and chosen tribes, and what the binds, or values, that connect us are. A humanness in crafts is one. Dig a little deeper into each of his collections and there’s always a fellow dedicated maker plying a careful trade. Here, it was the Lyttelton Hat Co., located southeast of Christchurch in New Zealand, which was enlisted for hand-cut and knotted raffia hats, sashes, and collars in chopped-up architectural swoops and folds that were charmingly decorative in a grounded way owing to their humble material. Then there were the jewelry “knots” by Jordan Draffin. Cast in 18-karat-gold, silver, and bronze, they froze a moment of creative impulse, and soft fabric, in precious metals, ultimately honoring it. That feeling was successfully woven into each of Docherty’s pieces.
