At London Fashion Week, Michael Halpern paid tribute to ballet dancers under lockdown for his spring/summer 2022 collection
“I actually have a Chinese family,” says Michael Halpern, founder of his eponymous label known for sparkly disco-ready pieces with a dramatic flair. He was, after all, trained under Donatella Versace. Halpern is US-born, London-based, so most could never have guessed. “My father didn’t have siblings but was really close to his best friend who is Chinese so the friend’s family basically adopted him. So I have like, 20 Chinese cousins!”
Do they sometimes have a say in the direction of his designs? Halpern laughs. “My cousin is amazing, she is very opinionated and she’s always said I need to come to Hong Kong to see the textiles.”
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For his latest collection, Halpern opted out of the fashion show format. Instead, he made a film with ballerinas from the Royal Ballet dancing and twirling in his latest designs at the Royal Opera House. “There was a story over lockdown of ballerinas having to take pieces of the floorboards from the performance halls home to practice and that really moved me,” he says. “So I was inspired by this idea of restricted movement and I wanted to also pay homage to their discipline and art through the fashion film.”
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