About Christopher Nemeth

Christopher Nemeth was an artist and fashion designer, part of a wider creative movement originating in 80s London, reshaping the understanding of the relationship between design and art with the use of repurposed materials.

Beginning in London, and later moving to live and work in Tokyo, Nemeth garnered a considerable  following for the distinctive silhouette, born through his intricate interest in the development of a artistic approach to the process of clothes-making, producing works of movement, which he used to refer to as self-portraits. 

The sensible individuality of his body of work, composed of carefully crafted garments, paintings and furniture, manifests a sincere devotion to the expressive nature of the artistic process in itself, celebrating continuous creation.

 

The History

Fashion designer and artist, Christopher Louis Nemeth (1959-2010) was born in Birmingham, England, where he spent the entirety of his childhood. Moving to London in 1979 in order to study fine-art at Camberwell College of Arts, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in painting three years later. 
While he continued painting after university, he taught himself clothing design through a practical approach to pattern cutting and sewing, making his own clothes using old post sacks from the Royal Mail, as well as cutting up his own paintings to salvage the underlying canvas, and eventually started selling them at a stall in Kensington Market, London, a three-story indoor market known for its counter-culture nature.

As he got discovered by the photographer Mark Lebon, who became a life-long friend and collaborative partner in the documentation of his work, Nemeth’s creations began to appear in various magazines and popular publications, including most notably iD, Face, Tatler. 
During this period, having been introduced by Lebon, Nemeth began as well a strong creative friendship with the accessory designer and stylist Judy Blame, with whom he worked on a considerable amount of projects.
 
Beginning in 1986, Nemeth would start doing regular trips to Japan as interest grew for his designs, beginning a relationship and eventually marrying the founder of the select store “Sector” in Shibuya, Tokyo, where he settled. 
Developing his artistic expression and adapting to a different way of life, Nemeth creativity flourished and led to the production, between the late 80s and early 90s, of a series of fashion shows and design projects centered around various aspects of the process of clothes-making, most notable of which would be the 1993 show “On Air East”, as well as the 1994 collaborative effort bringing together Nemeth, Lebon and Judy Blame titled “Hard Work”. 
In 1994, following the continued success of his work, Sector changed its name so as to become the eponymous Christopher Nemeth store, and simultaneously moved to its current location in the  Omotesando area.

Continuing to refine his expression, Nemeth would eventually see his interests shift towards painting and furniture making starting in the early 2000s, letting the developing of new clothes and shapes take a longer time to mature as he explored different ways to manifest his artistic vision, and endeavor ultimately cut short by his untimely passing in 2010 following a years-long struggle with cancer.

Throughout his life, without ever loosing his momentum, Nemeth proceeded to create an truly individual artistic expression extending across — but most importantly joining different creative fields, manifesting his unique conception of the artistic process, the core and the joy bringing life to his work.

Nemeth’s work has been featured in a number of museum exhibitions, some of which include ‘Dressed to Kill: 100 Years of Fashion’ at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra in 1993 to 1994, ‘Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s’ at The Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 2013.

Christopher Nemeth’s original designs are still produced today as they were during his lifetime, by the company he built together with his wife, now directed by the family, and are mostly made according to his initial specifications or the notes he left, using new fabrics or re-creations of fabrics he used at the time, perpetuating his love for the continuous artistic process through the re-issuing of his work.