Arj Selvam is a young Perth designer getting ready to make it big. His debut self-titled menswear label hits this January and promises to be an interesting adventure in fashion, one that is dark and mysterious yet highly covetable.
His clothes are informed by a degree in mechanical engineering and commerce. It’s a background which emerges through Selvam’s incorporation of such aesthetics as The Golden Ratio, or 1.618, the title of his AW 10 / European SS 10 range.
It’s a range which incorporates silk and coated linen, dabbles in structured blazers and draped t-shirts. Leather and bamboo jersey interplay with hand-woven silk and silk cotton to create a series of silhouettes where shorts appear unhemmed and hoods engulf.
Overall, 1.618 promises to be the perfect way to launch Arj Selvam, the label and the designer.
‘It’s sort of to tie in my engineering path and background,’ Selvam said of the title of his debut collection. ‘It’s a reference to the golden ratio, which is in mathematics. Why that number? Basically, it’s a number that appears in nature quite often and I sort of wanted to fuse my engineering and interest in fashion together.
‘The engineering side of things has allowed me to think laterally, and just figuring out the way things need to work or connect,’ Selvam explained further.
‘In terms of fashion or within clothing and pattern making, you sort of need to know how things connect, how fabric flows and drapes – although it’s menswear, so there’s not much drapery to that sort of thing, but you still need to know the fundamentals – and engineering has allowed me to think like that.’
A few courses in pattern and jewelry making later and Selvam was all ready to explore a future in fashion. Not one to set his sights simply on Australia, Selvam produces ranges as based on the European seasons, meaning that his autumn / winter range is actually a spring / summer collection, a simple reversal of fortunes, as it were.
‘All the garments are obviously delicate, for spring/summer, because it’s a spring/summer collection for the European season, so it is all lightweight,’ Selvam said of his debut range, drawing attention to his favourite piece within it. ‘The texture for the linen is quite soft but the garment that has a really interesting texture is the pair of double layer shorts.
‘They come in a couple of different fabrics, and they come in the hand-woven silk. On the outside, it sort of just looks like linen, you could say, but it’s actually hand-woven silk and on close inspection you can actually see the weave in it; you can actually see the intersections of the silk. It’s got a very interesting texture.’
There is an architectural fascination apparent in Selvam’s work, more so in the details of this collection and the next. There’s also an underlying homage to the likes of Ann Demeulemeester. But it’s a little known love of early 20th Century minimalism which perhaps informs Selvam’s work the most.
‘There’s an artist from the early 20th century called Kazimir Malevich and he was an artist sort of around the cubist era. He was the first person, or one of the first artists to draw on a blank piece of canvas, just a black square on canvas and that’s sort of been the representation for the brand.
‘What you’ll see in the next collection is it’s all about minimalism (with reference to) that black square that Kazimir Malevich painted back in 1911. It’s all about minimalism, so that’s definitely where the colours come from, where the colour palette draws from, that’s where the shapes for future pieces are drawing inspiration from, and just the brand in general. It’s all about minimalism.’
Well, not entirely. As mentioned earlier, there’s an architectural aesthetic which speaks through Selvam’s details, a nuance that next season will manifest as jewelry
‘I’ve played around with it before, but it actually is going to go into production this time and having said that, with the jewelry, with all my garments, all of it’s going to come with custom hardware, so if there’s a button needed, it’ll be all hand made out of sterling silver or titanium. It’s all about details.’
Arj Selvam will appear exclusively at online menswear site, For-Tomorrow, located at www.f-t.com.au. For more information on Arj Selvam the designer and label, visit www.arjselvam.com.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
