My conversations with Harry are mostly defined by the annoyingly striking blue colour of Facebook messages. I type and type and type... and Harry’s responses seem to be only the space between my own never-ending monologues. If you don’t know Harry, you might characterise him as distant, or if not, undoubtedly laconic. However, his encrypted personality holds safe, more than you could ever imagine.
Meeting Harry in person for the very first time was a little bit like an awkward blind date; a few messages exchanged and not a single clue about his appearance due to the lack of photographs of himself, as you would expect, on his personal Facebook profile. We decided to meet on the second floor outside the menswear studios in Central Saint Martins. The stress and the time frame to finalise his collection did not really allow him to go to fancy cafés or restaurants, which based on his Facebook Check-Ins and photographs of endless oysters and exquisite bottles of St Joseph lieu-dit hinted his expensive and very particular taste. After a few minutes of uncomfortably looking around at every single person passing by (since we didn’t know what each other looked like) I approached a young man, who seemed to be anxiously waiting for someone, and timidly said, “You must be Harry”. We sat down on one of the long, filthy tables full of paint on the second floor, and indolently started talking.
Harry’s real name is Ruihong Xu (roo-e-hong zoo) but he prefers to go by Harry, as you would imagine most people – including me – have a little bit of a hard time pronouncing it correctly; or a very hard time to be precise. Born and raised in Shanghai, China and “probably 26 years old,” as he tells me looking genuinely confused and worried: Harry has the ability to always look on point regardless of the number of deadlines, lack of sleep or if the show for his collection is only taking place in seven days time. Always calm and focused, humble but confident, with his hair slicked on the side to perfection, and always dressed in Dior Hommes from head to toe. Harry is here to go against the stereotypical ‘anti – fashion’ fashion designer who wears tracksuits and baggy sweaters and show the world that his taste does not reflect only on his garments.
Having completed work experience at Dior, Dries Van Noten and Kris Van Assche as well as having a very ambitious “Let me show you my work” attitude, Harry has the exquisite ability of earning your respect as a fashion designer; from the moment his work is on the table, chit- chat is over and business mode is on. “Menswear has to be smart but practical, a man should feel good but also comfortable in his clothes,” he says very seriously while taking packs and packs of paper including research, photographs, fabric samples and most importantly his sketches out of his deceivingly small black Dior shopping bag. “Harry is difficult but in a good way. He always has a very particular vision for what he is creating and he just simply doesn’t like people to intervene in it,” says Louis Loizou, BA Menswear and Knitwear pattern cutting tutor. As you would expect, Harry is not your average fashion designer student when it comes to organising his work. Everything is folded and bound to perfection while his design sketches for his collection are done electronically with a precision of centimetres as, “It is more efficient and business appropriate, as you can send that to a factory and they know exactly how to produce your garments.”
His collection is inspired by the contemporary Israeli photographer’s work, Michal Chelbin, and mainly her series entitled “Sailboats and Swans”, a collection of photographs of inmates both from Russian and Ukrainian prisons published in 2012. Harry was particularly fascinated by the heavy work wear and the ‘strong’ faces of the inmates in contrast to the floral, colourful and “tacky but beautiful in their own way” he describes the walls of the prisons that where used as the background for the portraits. “I think of the floral prints, as a hope and a positive element for all these men that are held in prison, contrasting the heavy, and very dull idea of being locked up in four walls.” Furthermore, the collection has been designed in a very specific manner in order to unveil a narrative of the inspiration drawn from the prisoners. “In the photographs of Michal Chelbin, most of the juvenile prisoners are half naked, while the older men wear heavy, work wear clothes. Therefore, I wanted the collection to unveil the story of this ‘vulnerability’ to ‘protection’ idea of how men and the boys are dressed, providing a lot of different silhouettes and shapes.”
The collection is dominated by the colours midnight blue and emerald green while floral pattern seems to finds its way to bloom in between the heavy and ‘cold’ work wear, either as a chiffon turtleneck or as a colourful finish to a pair of trousers. Furthermore, zippers seem to be the only ‘escape’ from Harry’s collection. “Buttons are not allowed due to their impracticality, while I also wanted to include the zippers as part of the collection rather than just for their function. Based on the context I am creating this Russian symphony, even zippers can be perceived as jewellery. This is prison we are talking about.” In addition, as a last minute epiphany, Harry embroidered Russian poetry themed around flowers as ‘inmate tags’ for his “Russian Symphony” as he likes to call his collection.
A few days after the internal BA show, which determines which collections will be included in the official Central Saint Martins Press show, I found myself carrying a few of my tutor’s bags to her office, which happens to be in the design studios. I passed by a small crowd of people who seemed to be looking at a very uninteresting, ordinary A4 piece of paper glued on the main wall. “What is this?”, I asked one girl who was squeezed between the crowd in order to reach the paper. “It’s the final list for the Press show, it just came out!” After that, I don’t remember much. Except from a million ‘Omg’, Harry responding to my messages in milliseconds for the first time and a lot of champagne. Since then, everything seems a bit blurry. The collection was in, and Harry’s encrypted personality was finally free for the world to see.