The natural; Hussein Chalayan launches an environmentally themed line.(Brief Article)

Byline: Sarah Mower

Hush! What's that stirring in the intriguing world of Hussein Chalayan? Why, it's a remarkably cute ecologically themed second collection, primed to emerge this spring. The new baby, Chalayan, has all the DNA traits of the father line-some shapes visibly descended from past collections, others with almost undetectable messages encrypted into the fabric. "I'm trying to be loyal to my own evolution," Chalayan says. "We're using all our usual languages in this."

In a nutshell, that means sporty clothes with a fresh, girlish ingenuity about them: animal prints, flippy muslin skirts, short bubble dresses, safari jackets, and cleverly cut swimwear, all made to cost 40 percent less than the collection Chalayan shows in Paris. One T-shirt dress with an elasticized hem can be looped up and worn at different lengths, according to whim. Another favorite dress, he explains, is "half-swimwear, half-dress, Lycra at the top, and cotton at the bottom. A lot of the details are very similar to what ...