HARRIS REED 2023 SEPTEMBER COUTURE COLLECTION: DUET

This season, Harris Reed, a black and white Old Hollywood dream is realised, paying homage to glamorous and exaggerated femininity. Silhouettes are outlined with black, as if Reed’s black and white childhood sketches had come alive from the page, walking the fluid line between fantasy and reality. This fantasy is explored through a swooping skirt hem that stands as if freeze-framed mid-movement, a sculptural skirt sitting vase-like independent of the wearer, and a black and white corset that reaches out and spreads wing-like from the body.

Duality has always been a theme in Reed’s work, the combining of masculine and feminine and the different facets that make up our whole being. In this Harris Reed 2023 collection, the structure and rigidity associated with the masculine is employed to create sculptural pieces that appear contrastingly feminine and fluid in their flowing shapes and the curves they expose.

Taking inspiration from vintage corset patterns, Reed plays with proportions, creating impossibly cinched waists that appear more extreme against the exaggerated hips, shoulders and skirts they are paired with. The stricture and restraint of corsetry is juxtaposed with fluid, generous draping and abundant use of fabric.

The rich depth of dead-stock black velvet is contrasted with the sheen of white duchess satin. The only concession to colour is seen in metallic accents, on the silver and pearl of custom Missoma breast cups, and champagne gold bugle beading.

The Harris Reed 2023 September collection title ‘Duet’ refers not only to the feminine and masculine, but the nature of a duet as a performance and, as always with Reed, this collection is viewed as a performance on the Runway stage, accompanied by the incredible vocals of Cosima. A duet is also a form of collaboration and Reed’s partnerships with jewellery brand Missoma and milliner Vivienne Lake continue to enrich the collection.

“Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above.” – Orlando, Virginia Woolf

ABOUT HARRIS REED

Fighting for the beauty of fluidity, half-American, half-British Harris Reed designs to create conversation. Growing up with a strong sense of self, Reed was able to quickly understand the transformative power of clothing and its correlation with identity and liberation.

Reed’s design process takes inspiration from the current social and political issues that Reed feels most connected to. The work Reed creates is built from assessing the responsibility that fashion has to spark conversation in relation to the injustices that are happening within society today, yet all while staying true to the brand’s ethos that strives for a vision of gender fluidity and inclusivity.

The overall DNA of the Harris Reed brand and personal identity, is best described as Romanticism Gone Nonbinary. It puts the wearer and their fluidity – in whatever way it manifests front and centre. Personally, Reed dresses themselves to invite the looks and stares, to blur the preconceived fault-lines people have about gender and sexuality.

For Harris Reed, fashion is truly revolutionary and has a huge role to play in pushing the world to a more expressive and accepting place – using his platforms to share personal visionary values, to help those seeking acceptance and self-love. Aside from fashion, Reed is also well known for his campaign and relationship with Gucci, as well as being an innovative key figure within the new generation of young creatives, whose work marries genres from fashion, film, beauty, culture and the digital world through a gender fluid lens.