NEW FOR FALL: SIKI IM

(via Nowness) Architect-turned-fashion designer Siki Im (who worked for Karl Lagerfeld and Helmut Lang before launching his eponymous menswear line last season) has imagined a fresh set of sartorial codes in his fall 2010 collection, inspired in part by Patrick Bateman, the pristinely dressed yet criminally deranged hero of Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel American Psycho. Responding to what he calls a “paradigm shift” in the world of big business, Im has subtly reconfigured the suit with some clinically deconstructive twists, including transparent silk-organza linings, missing lapels on jackets, mismatching hemlines on otherwise sober-looking crombies and a range of neatly tailored skirts. The collection, which also features accessories designed in collaboration with Made by Eugene, continues to explore Im’s fascination with the “blank canvas,” and situations where individuals are spurred into creativity by necessity. “I always get inspired by indigenous cultures,” he says. “Like how Peruvians layer their clothes with sweaters, or how homeless people use newspaper to warm themselves. It’s being functional, but super inventive.” In this video for the new collection, directed by photographer Robert Hamada (who has shot commercials for Levi’s and Abbey Lee for Pop’s latest augmented-reality issue), a gang of imaginary office workers rip it up and start again, demolishing computers and furniture in an attack upon the forms of the past. “It’s a beautiful decay, a sweet sadness in a way,” says Im. “I think where we are and where I’ve been in the past two seasons, there’s so much change. But a lot of good things have come out of it. I hope it ends with hope.”

Look for Siki Im's Fall/Winter collection at Blackbird next season.