Ray Harris - looking ahead!

Days are getting shorter, August is giving way to September, children are going back to school and we will soon take woolens and coats out of storage.  For those who still want to cling to summer and look ahead at what desigers have in store for us for Spring/Summer 2011, here is a glimpse at Ray Harris ' collection. The mood is nostalgic and reflective and Arno's beautiful pictures convey the bittersweet reality of a world coming to terms with reality after decades of wild growth.

Ray's words to describe his collection, Dreams and Sorrows, with my highlights in large print:

- a changing world

- facing new realities and harder times

- funerals and circuses – beauty and wonder face-to-face with sadness

- simplicity of the child-mind embracing both the spirit and joy of the dressing up box and the cruelty of “the lord of the flies”

- mixing feathers and pyjamas, broken dolls and wounded animals

- distressed sophistication

- appropriateness – our world is sick from excess of choice -stimulation, information, accessibility etc, whilst another world struggles to survive

- our clothes reflect our search for balance

- fashion so integral to our culture, is evolving through a transition from a basis of hype and disposability, to a new integrity

- we search for vintage, or the spirit of vintage to add meaning and resonance to our garments, lest they feel empty after purchase

- the child like ecstasy of being alive alongside the pain of living to adorn ourselves to ease our lives

- the inseparable and the irreconcilable, held together by ritual and ceremony

Serious words for real clothes, enlightened by a few flowers here and a few feathers there!

To see more of Ray Harris' clothes:  http://www.rayharris.co.uk/
To see more of Arno's pictures: http://www.arno-image.com/