The transformer; Hussein Chalayan resurrects the ghost of fashion past with revolutionary morphing robo-dresses.(Interview)

Byline: Tim Blanks

Hollywood may do its best to guarantee that popular entertainment is an assault on reason-you'll believe a man can fly-but fashion's wonders are generally more earthbound. On an October night in Paris, however, a fashion show fast-forwarded through 111 years of style history in a mere five outfits that took on lives of their own before the audience's eyes. An elegant Victorian gown contracted until it became a beaded flapper dress from the twenties. A full-skirted fifties silhouette morphed into a metallic sixties shift, Christian Dior to Paco Rabanne in 30 seconds, while the accompanying broad-brimmed hat shrank into itself, pivoted, and ejected a sporty visor. Time flew by as quickly as the single hand on the giant crystal water clock that functioned as a backdrop. Finally, model Leah De Wavrin stepped out on the catwalk and stood in a pool of light as her flying saucer of a hat swallowed up her diaphanous dress until she was naked in the spotlight-at which point the hat ejected a cloud of crystal dust, as if to say, "My work here is done."

In a season when the future of fashion was being furiously debated, this was more than a decisive moment. It was magic.

Six weeks earlier, the magician sat in the London branch of Soho House musing on his place in fashion. "I like to explore things that are taken for granted," Hussein Chalayan said. "Things that give shape to our lives that we don't ever question." Since he graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1994, Chalayan's daring intent has been memorably underpinned by the way he chose to show the clothes themselves. But the technological challenge he set himself with his new collection was possibly his most ambitious.

"To be able to do something like this, you have to work with people who are not from one particular background," said Chalayan. "It's all so interdependent, you need other people to make this happen. It's a humanist statement." His collaborators included product designer Paul Topen, the animatronic design company 2D:3D, jeweler Florian Ladstaetter, and a French beauty named Agathe Rouff, whom he acknowledged as "kind of a muse figure." The hats came from Topen; mind-boggling mechanics from 2D:3D; body-swathing show pieces of crystal, pearl, wooden bead, and glass from Ladstaetter; and, from Rouff, a newly airy femininity that lightened Chalayan's concept.

Three weeks after the interview at Soho House, Chalayan was in his East End studio dwelling on the enormity of the task he'd set himself. "Maybe the fairies will come and make it happen." Chalayan sighed. He was torn over a structural issue that had arisen with the actual presentation: Should the mechanical dresses be used as ...