Sam Smith stuns in inflatable Brit Awards outfit

Created by Leah Dolan, CNN

Featuring the good, the negative and the ugly, ‘Look of the Week’ is a normal collection committed to unpacking the most talked about outfit of the past seven times.

Fashion is all about the silhouette. And no just one took that sartorial maxim more practically than Sam Smith at the 2023 Brit Awards in London on Saturday.

Dressed in a customized glance by HARRI — the rising label helmed by British Indian designer Harikrishnan Keezhathil Surendran Pillai — Smith’s supersized curves resembled a Rorschach check, a balloon animal, or to some, a charred roast chicken. The significant-glow latex jumpsuit flared sharply at the singer’s thighs, building an exaggerated curvature that mirrored the substantially squared shoulders. It was the boldest, and most contentious, seem of the evening.

The jumpsuit is inflated with air to create balloon-like volume. Credit rating: Star Max/IPx/AP

Surrealist silhouettes have by now become a HARRI trademark, with air employed to inflate circus-like patterns and produce a cartoonish, ballooning feeling of quantity. Striking as they are stationary, the items are manufactured for movement. At the label’s Spring-Summertime 2023 London Manner 7 days presentation, Pillai enlisted dancers and mini-trampolines to display the clothes in motion. Smith, teetering on a pair of customized Valentino platforms, strutted throughout the purple carpet in similarly mesmeric kind.

The musician’s look took 4 times for Pillai to make, and it was 1 of his most ambitious clothes to day. (In earlier collections, the designer had caught to only inflating the reduce entire body). The undulating styles had been initially influenced by Pillai’s doggy, Kai. “I begun wondering about (it) from my dog’s stage of perspective,” he stated in an interview with the British chat display Excellent Morning Britain. “How we observed me from these types of a little, quick angle. (Like a) distorted body image.”

The divisive look was reminiscent of a Kensai Yamamoto design worn by David Bowie during his 1973 Ziggy Stardust tour.

The divisive seem was reminiscent of a Kensai Yamamoto layout worn by David Bowie all through his 1973 Ziggy Stardust tour. Credit history: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Photos

Whilst Smith could not have taken dwelling a Brit Award, they definitely even now left an affect. To several trend admirers, the outfit resembled that of a further powerful gender-defying dresser. In 1973, David Bowie wore a broad-leg vinyl jumpsuit created by the late Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto throughout his intercontinental Ziggy Stardust tour. Titled “Tokyo Pop,” the flamboyant garment acted like an optical illusion — creating the artist to appear preposterously bow-legged each time he crouched. Yamamoto’s bigger-than-existence geometric creations were paramount in constructing Bowie’s renowned stage presence, and his figures Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane.

In the same way, Pillai’s models are a hypnotic reminder that subversion is not the only path to gender-fluid trend. Further than current trends seeing some cis-adult men in pink crop tops and skirts, androgyny can be as easy as shapes.

Leading impression: Sam Smith attends the Brit Awards 2023 in London donning a tailor made HARRI latex jumpsuit.