CARRI MUNDANE - CASSETTE PLAYA

Carri Mundane is an English Fashion Designer working in London on her own label 'Cassette Playa'. She is a menswear designer but has also created clothes for women. Being a very ‘street’ designer, her work relates extremely well to the old school hip-hop subculture. Her design detail consists highly of intricate, repetitive patterns and prints which are a definite factor of clothing in the nineties, particularly west coast USA. Will Smith style is a typical example of how her work could be seen as a more current version of the funky, printed, baggy fashion as seen on ‘The Fresh Prince of Bell Air’. Typical garment styles have been seen within some of Carri’s collections such as oversized shirts and oversized shorts. Typical factors of these garments are size and length. The shorts often come beneath the knee and are of a simple loose shape. The clothes which Carri wears herself are often her own designs. She usually sports baggy T-shirts with funky printed fabric of an exciting range of bright colours, a classic TLC old school look which has been adapted to Carri’s style with her own design aesthetic. Her garments are clearly casual garments but also appear to be slightly glamorous because of the silky, rich fabrics used. Another feature of her garments which resemble the trends of eighties and nineties hip-hop are baseball and bomber jackets. Throughout almost all of her collections there is a different design of one of these style jackets. Some of them are usually printed, others are plain, however, they always have something quirky about them, whether it’s a binding on the edge of pockets or seams which are a contrasting colour, or an exciting print. Throughout her career she has gained lots of experience within the urban and street area of the fashion scene, working with Billionaire Boys Club, Bape and designing and styling for stars such M.I.A. These brands and M.I.A are all heavily part of the street fashion scene and have particularly old school influences. They seem like a perfect match for Carri Mundane, as the garments and designs she creates reflect some of their creations and particularly M.I.A’s style.



As well as the design and shape of garments reflecting the style of eighties and nineties hip-hop, Carri mundane mainly uses trainers as the shoes to go with her designs. She has worked in collaboration with Nike and their ‘Dunk’ trainer which alongside Air forces and Air Jordans, are one of the main style trainers which were worn and extremely popular within the eighties and nineties eras in the USA.






To sum up Carri Mundane’s work in relation to eighties and nineties hip-hop it is simply the original shape baseball jackets, oversized garments and extreme and colourful prints incorporated with nineties nu rave which truly reflect these eras and how they have been brought into the fashion of today.

ALEXANDER WANG

Alexander Wang is an exhilarating Japanese Designer, based in the U.S, the country of which his career began at the raw age of 18 and has since then developed tremendously, demonstrating his own, unique style. At a first glance, Alexander’s collections vividly demonstrate a sense of casual and coolness yet still having a classy, well to-do edge to them. He designs for women and men. However, even throughout the women’s wear collections, he follows through a feel of masculinity with the cut of the garments, ranging from jackets to shorts and straight panels that deter from the fitted garment that shows off the womanly figure. This idea can be seen in not all but a large proportion of the garments in his Fall 2011 ready-to-wear collection. There is a real technical and mechanical feel within some of the garments and a somewhat suburban style weaves in and out. A few of the looks created seem to have some references of the late eighties and early nineties fashion, particularly that of the Urban scene. Jackets are a particular garment in his collection which have clearly referenced the urban style of this era, predominantly in the U.S. The bomber jackets with oversized garments are a definite key look. The whole enlargement of the garments, including details such as pockets really defines the nineties suburban feel, even though it was mainly the men that were representing this look, women did also. However, regardless of this, it all links together as the masculinity of his feminine looks is apparent throughout his collections. His pre-fall 2011 collection similarly incorporates the chilled out nineties style baseball jackets into high-end fashion design. The thick bands around the hem, the wrists and the neck are the signature details with a loose fit. These particular details also can be seen throughout his Spring 2010 but not necessarily within baseball jacket designs but they have been taken and incorporated into other garments such as cropped tops with puffed sleeves and chunky elasticated bands for the cuffs. Along with these garments, the baggy sweatshirt was a well-known garment in the eighties and nineties and these were not only in the hip-hop scene but also throughout other trends. Alexander Wang has designed a few of these in his Spring 2010 ready-to-wear collection and has accentuated the volume of the sleeve. Many of the hip-hop eighties and nineties fashion trends have been researched and adapted to more high-end fashion garments but still reflect the main details and shapes of the original style garments of those eras.