At a time like today, between bombings and ethnic cleansing, Hussein Chalayan's "After Words: A Thread" collection still strikes a chord two decades later. Inspired by events and traumas from his childhood and the struggles that war causes, the designer delivered one of the most emotional runways shows in fashion history. "This is around 1999, and I was initially inspired by the war in Bosnia and by the people being displaced from their homes. That actually reminded me that we experienced the same thing in Cyprus. I wasn’t born then — Cyprus was divided in 1974, but these events happened in the Sixties. I connected it to the idea of a universal upheaval of having to leave your home at the time of war. And what I wanted to do was to look at how you protect your possessions by having them as chair covers or how you can put the objects in a room into the pockets of your clothes and take them with you, so it was about that carrying your home with you...It was the idea of trying to capture something in my opinion quite horrific in a very sort of stripped-down way. I thought there was universality to it, even though Bosnia was the trigger..." @chalayanstudio The decorations disappearing throughout the show is a poignant allusion to the displacement of refugees during times of war, with every item being carried away until the chair covers and table are worn out of the room. Through the premise of the collection, Chalayan is able to shed light on a universal, traumatic tragedy. * “He raises daily life to a level of something magical. He was born with these powers..." commented @bjork Words @domenicocostantin